


Heroes and Villains

by hix



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes, Angst, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Past Abuse, everyone still has their devil fruit powers, maybe romance later, pirates are the super villains or vigilantes, ranked marines are the superheroes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2018-08-15 03:40:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8041129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hix/pseuds/hix
Summary: Living in East City isn't easy, not when half of its heroes as just as corrupt as its villains, and nobody cares what happens to the lives of those caught in the wake of the fighting. For many, it's more a matter of survival than it is of joy, among these Zoro, a swordsman who no longer knows what he wants, Nami, a reluctant thief trying to keep her sister safe at all costs, and Sanji, a cook trying and failing to bury a past that won't leave him alone. All of that starts to change when a rookie super starts causing trouble, claiming that he will 'save the world', if he can only gather the right crew for the job.





	1. A New Recruit?

**Author's Note:**

> The warnings here are for violence (mostly in later chapters), language (Sanji has a colorful vocabulary), and past abuse (obliquely mentioned). I'll bring them up again when relevant.
> 
> Updates on Wednesday and Saturday.

Every week Sanji tried to delay it as long as possible, but in the end it was an unavoidable fact of life that someone had to go shopping for the restaurant, and that old man Zeff only trusted _him_ to get the right quality specialty ingredients, and that the best place to get them was in the Loguetown district. No matter how much he hated going.

As he watched the day’s first superidiot kick down a stand selling rare spices, yelling something about getting money for ‘captain buggy’ and sporting a ridiculous haircut (hat?) that looked like a lion mane around his face, he took a long drag from his cigarette to try and keep his temper. He wondered if there wasn’t some way of pushing this chore onto Patty or Carne. He stepped around the lion-headed robber, trying to remember if there was any other spice stand that didn’t require crossing the entire district, and hating the nuisance that were supers who couldn’t think of better places to attack than open-air markets.

 “Oi, are you ignoring me?” A hand shot out to grab Sanji’s shirt, and he was pulled roughly aside to stand face to face with the asshole that had ruined his shopping trip before it had even begun. This close up, the man was even stranger-looking; his mane-like hair, growing all around his face, looked to be natural and not like some mask, which hinted at his having some devil fruit heritage. Sanji blew out a puff of smoke into his face, cigarette held in his mouth by his teeth. The man coughed and shoved him away—he likely had better senses than normal, if he really was devil-born.

Though a part of him wanted nothing better than to beat the crap out of some random superidiot who was trying to mess with him, Sanji also knew that fighting criminals was supposed to be a superhero job (or at the very least a military one), and that he would lose the whole day at the police station if he interfered. He was willing to let the lion-man get away to avoid that. He turned to leave, but caught motion from the side of his eye and jumped to the side just in time to avoid the whip that cracked at the spot he had just been standing.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” The lion-man-idiot yelled, pulling his whip back. Sanji realized that the other passers-by – spectators, by now, really, how he hated Loguetown—had formed a ring around the two of them, having anticipated the fight with the knowledge and experience of those who lived in a city swarming with superidiots.

“Someone who has better things to do than play around with you, you shitty cat,” Sanji spat back, taking the cigarette from his mouth and crushing it to the ground. Screw wasting the day with the police. If he didn’t kick this super’s ass he would feel restless the rest of the week.

The man’s face twisted into an angry snarl. “You’re going to pay for that! Don’t you know who I am?”

Sanji didn’t dignify that with a reply. If East City could get a bellie for every megalomaniacal super who believed themselves to be ‘Big News’ _,_ it would be able to pay off all its external debts and rebuild the many slums that made it such a breeding ground for villains in the first place. Instead, he shifted his weight to his right foot and kicked the cat-man in the face.

He stared, his leg still in the air, a bit dismayed as the would-be robber crashed into a building and knocked down the wall. Damn it, last time that had happened the city had gone and made him pay for it, which had really meant that the old man’s restaurant had paid for it, and he didn’t want to face Zeff with another stupid debt, not when he was supposed to be _helping_ , damn it.

“Ahhh! That was so cool, you sent that lion-head guy flying!” A loud voice broke through the spectator babble, and Sanji turned to find a kid, maybe seventeen years old and wearing a ridiculous-looking straw hat, staring at him with a wide grin and eyes that all but sparkled. “I like you!”

As far as love confessions went, Sanji had certainly received stranger ones, though none from guys, and none at all recently. He made a face. “I don’t go for guys,” he said, utterly disinterested, turning his mind to how likely it was that none of the spectators would be able to identify him if he made himself scarce just then.

Straw hat laughed, loud and carefree. “Neh, how about you join my crew?”

Sanji did a double take at that. His ‘ _crew_ ’? Was that unremarkable kid saying _he_ was a supervillain? That he was the _captain_ of a villain crew? He couldn’t help a laugh from bubbling up in reply to that.

“Sorry, kid, I already got a job,” _and no intention of running around town making people’s life difficult for no reason. Not when I already do that without even meaning to._ With that depressing thought, and the reminder of the trouble he was potentially in, he slipped back into the crowd and decided he might as well go hide in a less flashy district for a while.

~~~--~~~

Zoro dreamed, as he often did, of red eyes and a tall black sword; of endless, hopeless fighting, and of a friend—his first and only, for a long time – who gave in to despair. It should have been a torment, and it was, but it was also the only time he could see her, speak with her, even if it came with the helplessness of losing her, over and over again.

Luffy woke him when he burst into their building, the metal door that led directly in from the underground tunnels slamming shut behind him. He ran into the large, open central room they had converted into a common area, furnished with a cheap, long couch, a faded overstuffed armchair, an old sturdy coffee table and a television that was older than anyone currently living in the building.

Zoro, who had been napping sprawled out in the couch, his three swords resting comfortably across his chest, sat up, yawned, and tried to listen to the excited babble coming from his friend’s mouth.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” he paused to yawn again and rub the sleep from his eyes. “Either one of us could have sent that guy through a building. Hell, didn’t you send that very same lion-guy flying just last week?” he only remembered the man because he was so obviously devil-born, though he had been disappointingly weak despite that.

“I did?” Luffy frowned.

“Yeah, remember? Nami picked a fight with Buggy and we had to get her out of his territory?” Luffy’s latest ‘recruit’ gave “trouble” a whole new meaning. Not that Zoro was complaining, since it resulted in more fights, which was always a positive consequence in his book. Zoro thought Nami was capable of starting a fight with an Admiral-ranked super if she thought she could make money out of it. Or, well, she would pick the fight and throw him and Luffy in the fray while running off with the loot.

“Oh!” recognition lit up in his eyes. “Yeah, he was really weak,” he laughed, and Zoro couldn’t help smiling at the echo of his own thoughts. Buggy’s crew wasn’t particularly threatening—they were mostly regular humans, and their leader was pretty unambitious, as such. Crazy, for sure, and his freaky clown costume only emphasized that trait, but he seemed happy enough reigning over his thirteen block realm, selling drugs and ‘protection’, using his reputation as a devil fruit user to stop trouble before it started.

So long as that trouble wasn’t a certain ginger thief with more ambition than sense.

While Zoro got lost in his thoughts, Luffy had resumed his enthusiastic description of his earlier encounter with the blonde kicker, clearly enjoying himself. It must have been some kick.

Luffy’s racket had drawn out the building’s other two residents. Usopp came out first, laptop in hand as he collapsed into the armchair and began typing, while Nami joined them more quietly, approaching like a mouse slowly entering the living area of a cat, then taking a perch on the other end of Zoro’s couch, a monster-sized textbook on ‘Atmospheric Dynamics’ on her knee.

“I’m with Zoro on this one,” Usopp said, his fingers flying on the keyboard. “We know nothing about him and we already have you two to fight out battles- er, I mean, us three.” He looked up quickly, fingers stopped. “I could take that guy out too.” His lies were as obvious as ever, but Zoro had found that he really didn’t mind them as much as he had thought he would. The boy was loud and impulsive, but he had real talent with the machines, where Zoro had absolutely none, and he had gotten them all out of trouble before by hacking their criminal records in the local police force. He might have no devil fruit ancestry, but he was capable in his own way.

“Not unless you threw your laptop at him and it exploded,” Nami commented slyly, and Luffy laughed. Usopp bristled and set off in an increasingly unlikely tale of his previous exploits against supervillains. It only had Luffy laughing harder, now sitting cross-legged on top of the coffee table and clutching at his stomach, and even Zoro couldn’t help smiling.

“Truth be told, I don’t really care who you have join this little group of misfits,” Nami said, prefacing yet another of her ‘I’m just crashing here while things quiet down, I’m not one of you, really’ statements, “but all of this seems like a pointless argument. I mean, you don’t even know his name, Luffy, do you? Or how to find him again?”

Luffy gaped at her, like the thought hadn’t crossed his mind at all. Zoro rubbed at his eyes tiredly. Of course it hadn’t.

“B-but Usopp can find him! Right, Usopp?” He turned his head towards their friend, who was still been mumbling about his ‘eight thousand loyal troops’ and his defeat of ‘every devil fruit user south of Loguetown’, but puffed out his chest as soon as the attention was back on him.

“Of course I can! Who do you think you’re talking to?” He cracked his knuckles dramatically before hunching over his laptop and typing away like mad. “I am the Great Usopp, master of the internet! The great hacker Soge King, who always gets his target!” he started laughing, a bit madly. Well, no one in their band was all the way sane, really, so who was Zoro to criticize? “Tell me everything you know about this guy, Luffy!”

As Luffy started listing out the pathetically few detail he remembered (how was it useful to know that he smelled of fish soup?), Zoro picked himself up from the couch so that he was sitting normally and allowing for enough room so that Nami could sit back, if she wanted.

“Oh, and his eyebrow was funny looking,” Luffy added, fingers stretched out in front of him as he counted out what he knew.

“I’m going to need a little more than that,” Usopp said, still typing. “Funny how?”

“It was like,” he used one hand to pull all of his short black hair down into one eye, while with the other one he traced his own eyebrow, tracing a spiral at the end. Zoro sat up a little straighter at that. Assuming that Luffy wasn’t exaggerating, such a trait could mean this man was devil-born, like Zoro.

“A swirly eyebrow?” Usopp said uncertainly, frowning at his screen, still typing. “Spiral eyebrow?” He mumbled a few other synonyms before his eyes lit up with triumph. “I think I got something! Is this him?” He turned the laptop so that Luffy could see, and Zoro and Nami leaned in behind him to take a look.

The picture on screen was grainy and had a bad angle, but it was easy enough to make out the blonde hair, angry eyes, and the ridiculous eyebrow, just as Luffy had described. In the picture he was making a rude gesture at the cameraman while turning a corner, mouth half open. The headline beneath it was two weeks old, and read ‘Infamous restaurant Baratie under investigation for the third time’. The caption beneath the picture said ‘The restaurant’s sous chef, Sanji, who has been arrested twice for disturbing the peace and three times under charges of vigilantism, is seen here declining to comment.’

Funny, it didn’t look like he was declining to comment. It looked like he was telling the newspaper to go fuck itself. Zoro found himself feeling a reluctant kinship with the stranger Luffy had decided to recruit.

“That’s him!” Luffy yelled happily, at the same time that Nami read out loud “Baratie?” like it was a name she recognized.

“Heh, Usopp does the impossible again,” Usopp bragged, thumbing his nose.

“All you did was an internet search, wasn’t it?” Nami commented, distracted. Usopp deflated and started up his mumbling again.

“You know the place?” Zoro asked Nami. The name sounded familiar, in a distant way that meant he had heard it in passing a few times before, but meant nothing more to him.

“Yeah, it’s…” she hesitated, placing a finger on her lips as she often did when she was calculating just how much she should tell them. “A lot of local supers use it as a meeting spot. Villains and vigilantes both. Sometimes licensed heroes, too, if they have to meet with someone under the radar. It’s in the underground, in a pretty shady part of it, but the food is supposed to be good, and it’s said that every cook working there can hold their own in a fight.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been casing the place,” Zoro said, half wishing she had been, if only for a good excuse to get into a fight with whoever was there. Nami made a face.

“That place barely breaks even, there would be nothing worth stealing there.” Which meant she had considered it, and thought better of it. She shrugged. “Its patrons, on the other hand…” the familiar glint of greed in her eye gave her smile an ominous twist.

“He’s a cook!” Luffy was telling Usopp happily, ignoring Zoro and Nami. “We’ll have good food every day after he joins!”

“Eh, the man has a job, Luffy…” Nami said uncertainly. “It’s one thing to get two homeless, jobless bums like these to join you-“

“Oi!” Usopp and Zoro both complained. He had not been homeless _or_ jobless. He had been between residences, and he had been quite a successful underworld fighter, whenever he managed to find that damned arena that moved around every month.

“-but you can’t expect someone who has a life to just drop everything to join you.”

She had a point. Whatever else he might have been, Zoro had been aimless for years before running into Luffy and rekindling the focus on his old dream. Usopp had been freeloading with a childhood friend, who had lost all her money and belongings to a conman just before Luffy and Zoro had come into their lives. She had been taken in by distant family on the other end of the City, while Usopp had sworn to return everything she had lost and joined Luffy. Nami had just escaped the fire that burned down her apartment building, and was quick enough to ‘strike an alliance of necessity’, though she insisted it was temporary. In all of their cases, they had nothing to lose when Luffy had come offering them a place with him.

“Why not?” Luffy asked petulantly.

“Because people don’t just quit their jobs and become criminals after someone asks them to,” Nami said, strained.

“Why not?” Luffy repeated.

“Give it up,” Zoro cut in before Nami could get stuck deeper into the endless argumentative black hole that was a stubborn Luffy. “He’s got his mind set.”

Nami glanced at him, then rolled her eyes. She fell backwards deeper into the couch, her posture dramatically defeated. “Oh, well, do what you will, then.” But there was something like a smile on her face, which she quickly hid behind her monster textbook.

 “Yosh!” Luffy pumped his fist in the air, excited. “Tonight, we’re going to the Baratie! For our cook and food!”

~~~~~-----~~~~~

Nami walked at the back of the strange group, trying very hard to ignore the simple feeling of _fun_ that came in anticipation to their nonsense adventure. She had been too long with them already, she knew. She had only meant to stay a few nights, maybe to get their trust enough to use them as convenient decoys for a few jobs she had half planned. She had done as much to other fools in the years since Arlong had taken her in after her mother’s death.

She was a professional. A thief of the highest caliber, Arlong’s best, for all that she was the youngest. He trusted her enough to loosen her leash, allowing her to stay wherever she wanted in the city, and only having to report back to him every month. She wasn’t stupid, though. The leash was still there, real as ever, as he held Nojiko close and dangled her well-being as both the carrot and the stick to Nami’s performance.

She was not supposed to be having _fun_.

She was not supposed to be letting her fucking _guard down_ around these idiots. Zoro was devil-born and Luffy was as super as they came with his stupid rubber ability. She hated supers, without exception. Devil-born or having eaten a fruit, costumed or playing at regular life, villain or vigilante or hero, they were all the same. They pushed regular people around like a lesser race, and used them indiscriminately.

She had already decided to leave. It was growing far too dangerous, to her heart if not to her health. She had collected a fair amount of loot in the month she had stayed with them, enough to buy Nojiko another month out of the brothel, and maybe the freedom to go out during the day as well. Could she convince Arlong to let her attend college? It had taken millions of bellies over the years to convince him to let Nojiko get her high school degree.

“Hey, Zoro, where the hell are you going?” She looked around at the sound of the familiar argument, just in time to see Usopp dragging Zoro away from the stairs that would have let him out into the city. “The Baratie is _underground_ , remember?”

“Shut up! You weren’t being clear,” Zoro argued back, unapologetic about his dismal sense of direction. Nami had to make an effort to wipe the smile off her face. It made no sense—it wasn’t even that funny. The devil-born all had unstable personality traits, much like their physical abnormalities. There was a reason it was still considered a ‘curse’ to be the descendant of a devil fruit user, despite it giving them tougher, stronger bodies, and the capacity to heal from nearly any wound, so long as they survived it. Zoro’s sense of direction (or lack thereof), Luffy’s lack of common sense, they were symptoms of a disease, not amusing quirks.

“Nami, Nami, we can buy lots of food, right?” Nami jumped a little when she noticed how close Luffy had gotten without her noticing, and wasn’t there so much wrong with _that_? She prided herself on always being aware of her surroundings, a technique necessary to any good thief and thoughtless for a person as paranoid as she. Yet lately she’d noticed that any one of the three idiots she shared a house with could enter her personal space without setting off her internal alarms.

“Uh, yeah, Luffy,” she was still out of sorts, or her answer would have been much more biting. The idiot trusted her with all their money, and had made her the treasurer of the group, unofficially. She was feeling just a little guilty about her plans to leave them all high and dry, though, so she had agreed to finance the outing.

“Don’t ask her, it’s _our_ money too, Luffy.” Zoro said gruffly, catching up with them while Usopp kept a wary eye on the wandering swordsman.

“Don’t give me that,” she complained, rolling her eyes. “If you had it your way, you would have blown all of Buggy’s money on booze and meat within a week.”

“You think they have good meat dishes at the restaurant?” Luffy asked Usopp, who took the opportunity to tell a new story about how all Baratie cooks went out hunting in the plains for fresh meat, after he had taught them how to properly kill a buffalo. Seriously, that guy was an endless fount of useless, impossible tall tales.

“You didn’t have to come with us, Nami,” Zoro’s voice was quiet in contrast to the busy underground street and Luffy and Usopp’s argument on the merits of buffalo meat. Nami stiffened and sent the usually stoic swordsman a suspicious glance. Out of the three, Zoro always seemed to notice more than she wanted him to.

“It’s fine,” she mumbled, unsure if it was an excuse for Zoro or helself. She really had no business following along on Luffy’s ‘recruitment’ visit, but she couldn’t help herself. She would be leaving soon. Surely staying around and stocking up on a few more stories to tell her sister couldn’t hurt, right?

The Baratie came into view some time later, its ridiculous fish silhouette standing out among the more dark and somber businesses in the underground district. It was a bit far from their home, about twenty minutes by subway  then another ten minute walk after their stop, so it wasn’t any wonder they hadn’t gone out to eat there before. Not only that, but Nami had made quite a few enemies in her time as a thief of thieves, and even in the short time he had become—well, whatever it was he was, it changed from hero to villain by the day—Luffy had antagonized quite a few criminals. It simply wasn’t smart to frequent a place like the Baratie under such conditions.

Nami had taken all of this into account and dressed accordingly, in a long, form-fitting white coat and a woolen hat that hid all of her hair. A striped scarf finished the disguise, easy enough to slip onto her face if she spotted anyone that might see her. At least this was happening in late fall, or she would have looked ridiculous. Luffy, oblivious as ever, wore jeans, a red coat, and his signature straw hat, which was all but asking to be recognized.

“It’s a fish!” Luffy cried out, excited like a little kid at Christmas. “That’s so cool, our new cook works in a giant fish!”

“He’s not… oh, whatever, I don’t even care anymore.” Nami sighed. She hoped that at least the food would live up to the reputation, and that they could get served before Luffy inevitably started a scene.

“This ought to be interesting,” Zoro said with a smile, the one that said he was looking forward to beating the crap out of someone. Nami followed his gaze to see a couple of unconscious thugs slumped over by the entrance, with a third one apologizing loudly to someone inside and trying to drag them away.

_Right, interesting_. At least she could be sure that her last adventure out with Luffy and his friends wouldn’t be a boring one.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, anyone who read this! Thanks for getting this far :)
> 
> The idea behind this story occurred to me a few weeks ago while reading the manga, and simply wouldn't leave me alone, so here we are. I have a few more chapters written out, and I'll be updating twice a week while they last (next one will be on Saturday). I'm really interested in hearing people's thoughts on this, since I'm still working out the details, so all comments are appreciated.
> 
> In case anyone is interested, there might be romance at some point, but it wouldn't be for a while, since I want to focus on their friendship more, and it will probably be a strange love triangle between Zoro, Sanji and Nami, but nothing's set in stone yet. Also, it will get more angsty in later chapters. If it goes on long enough I'll bring in the other Straw Hats, though probably not before I sort out the awful, awful pasts of Nami, Zoro and Sanji. Oh, and anyone paying attention will probably recognize other manga characters in the background throughout, but I don't want to fill up the character tags with so many names. 
> 
> Anyway, next chapter is all Sanji, see you then!


	2. Just another night at work

Sanji was being kept out of the kitchen and working as a waiter while Zeff finished fuming about the latest fine to come to the restaurant courtesy of Sanji’s temper. It was a role he was used to by now, as he often filled in for the waiters who quit all too frequently, and what stung was being kept out of the kitchen, not being made to work the floor. At least, not much. His fingers already itched to hold a cigarette despite it being only the second hour of his shift, and he wasn’t so discourteous a server as to smoke while serving food, even if half the customers smoked without a second thought.

It hadn’t even been all that big of a fine, really. He could make that much in tips in a week, if he really tried. Not that he kept much of the money he made at the Baratie. Seeing as his living quarters were in the top floors beside the old man’s and his meals mostly came from the restaurant’s  own kitchens, he didn’t really mind. About all he used money for was to get new clothes and shoes every few months after he wore down his current wardrobe.

Besides, he had a debt to Zeff that no amount of money could pay. Just as Zeff had a debt to him he would never admit, and Sanji could never demand. It was an odd thing to owe one’s life to a man who had killed his parents, then become almost a father to him in the aftermath. The web of debts, favors and wrongs that tied them together was far too tangled for him to even begin to unravel, not that he was in a particular hurry to do so. Zeff had his restaurant and Sanji had his freedom, to a point, and a place to cook and sleep and not have to explain anything if he woke screaming from nightmares. He knew Zeff wasn’t far better, not with the way he would rub at the prosthetic leg with a distant look in his eyes when he didn’t think anyone was looking.

In short, their arrangement worked. So what if they sometimes hated each other to the point of actually planning out elaborate murder scenarios? Zeff hadn’t killed Sanji for being the catalyst that ended all hopes of fulfilling his dream, and Sanji hadn’t killed Zeff for murdering the only safe and happy family he had ever known. Plans were one thing, but they both knew neither would put them into effect.

Besides, there were some perks to working the floor at Baratie.

Sanji was in the middle of a long and overly elaborate compliment to a pretty young lady that had come into the restaurant escorted by a smug-looking super with pink hair and an air of entitlement that all but screamed ‘government licensed hero’, despite being out of costume. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, pink hair growing angry and impatient, but most of his attention was heaped on the giggling lady that let him take her hand and place a kiss upon it.

“Aren’t you going to take our order?” the superidiot all but growled, interrupting Sanji’s heartfelt declaration of eternal devotion to the beauty of the man’s date.

“Tcht,” Sanji let go of her soft hand and reached into his suit’s pocket for the small notebook he used to take orders. “Hello welcome to the Baratie may I take your order, you damn bastard,” he recited in a monotone, which got him a brand new throbbing vein in the man’s temple. Heh, he shouldn’t try to show off his date if he didn’t have the temperament to handle some harmless jibes. His date wasn’t helping him out, stifling a laugh at Sanji’s antics.

“The day’s special and some red wine, for the both of us,” the man’s lips barely opened as he snarled out his order. Sanji had to give him credit—he was sure the smug super would have broken down into a fight by that point. Oh, well, there was still the rest of the meal to poke fun at him.

He jotted down the order and gave the lady a wink and half a bow before leaving their table. The Baratie might not be a high class restaurant, but the food was exceptional and enough people used it to set up business dealings that the customers had to be more lenient towards the less than stellar service available from cooks and waiters who were, almost to a man, ex-criminals and thugs. They all knew how to be discreet, however, and how to keep snoops and troublemakers out, which was far more desired than even tempered, polite service.

Speaking of which, he saw a couple of badly disguised reporters ease into a table by the doors. He saw the other servers giving both them and him a wide berth, which as good as told him he wasn’t the only one to notice, and that once again they were leaving the heavy lifting up to him. _You wanted more responsibility, Sanji, don’t complain when you get it_ , he scolded himself. Still, he’d have to have a talk with those lazy servers later. A talk which would lose them half of their wait staff, which Zeff would doubtless blame on him.

That was a problem for later, though. For now, he had some eavesdropping lowlifes to get rid of.

 *-*-*

He had just tuned out the frantic apologies of the reporters’ friend when a new beauty walked in through the doors. She had light brown eyes and a slender body, though much of her features were hidden beneath a long white coat, hat and scarf. He was beside her in an instant, his mouth already open to utter a string of compliments, when one of the people escorting her cut in between the two of them.

“It’s you!” The boy who had blocked his progress said, far too loudly. It tickled something in Sanji’s memory, but it wasn’t until he spotted the straw hat perched atop his messy black hair that recognition clicked and he remembered the morning’s encounter with the loud spectator that had asked him to ‘join his crew’. Sanji took in the others in the party, then, connecting the dots. Aside from the beautiful woman who was keeping her distance behind the boy and eyeing Sanji speculatively, there was another boy with long, dark kinky hair wearing green overalls, this one all knees and elbows and awkward adolescence, and a green haired, tan-skinned man that wore three swords at his belt.

“Table for four?” he asked, nonplussed by the strange group. Was this the boy’s ‘crew’? Two of them didn’t look old enough to be out of high school, the woman stood out from the group like a dove among pigeons, and the last, the swordsman… Sanji knew of him. He was quite the famous fighter in the Moon Colosseum, the underground fighting ring run by the enigmatic superhero Donflamingo. Whether from masochism or pessimism, Sanji always tried to keep up with the careers of the Colosseum fighters, and ‘three-sword Zoro’ was reported to give a spectacle every time he showed up. What was such a man doing as an underling to a complete unknown?

“Hey, hey, mister cook, join my crew, won’t you?” the boy asked, far too loudly, drawing the eyes of every single server. Annoyance flared in Sanji’s breast and he wondered if this boy was some kind of karmic punishment for tormenting the superidiot customer earlier.

“No, I’m quite good where I am, actually.” He said, then leaned sideways away from the stupid loud idiot so he could meet the eyes of the beautiful woman behind him. “Table for four?” He asked her, this time determined to ignore the bastard in the straw hat.

When she lifted her eyes and met his, he knew instantly that she was trouble. Both _in_ it, and certain to _cause_ it. She wore a restrained smile, like she wanted to laugh but couldn’t remember exactly how to, and in her eyes and posture there was desperation and a weary distrust of everything that was slowly eating away at all the parts of herself that could someday be happy. It was silly, stupid, really, to think that he could know this much about a stranger within seconds of meeting her, especially when she looked so confident and relaxed on the surface, but he felt absolutely certain about it. Then again, Sanji knew exactly what to look for, and was, himself, far better at hiding it than she was.

“Er, mister cook? Our table?” Sanji blinked himself back to reality at the woman’s prompting, and quickly looked away to try and get his bearings back.

“Sorry, this way,” he was so thrown that he completely forgot to flirt as he picked up four laminated menus and led them to the table recently vacated by the reporters. “I’ll give you some time to look through the menu.” He really needed a smoke. And some time to think. And maybe to sneak out back and let one of the other servers deal with this troublesome party.

“I’m Luffy,” the boy said, shoving himself in front of Sanji again, grinning. “And I’m going to save the world!” He struck out his arm to shake. Sanji, seeing no way of avoiding him with his friends already sitting behind him at the table, decided to get it over with.

“Sanji,” he said, giving the boy’s hand a quick shake. When the boy wouldn’t release it, he added, “and I’m going to kick the crap out of you if you don’t get out of my way right now.”

Luffy laughed, far too loud, and let go. Sanji made his escape quickly, walking through the forbidden kitchen with barely a pause and stopping only once he was outside in the alley behind the restaurant, a cigarette in his mouth and a lighter in his trembling hands. His breathing was too shallow, and his head felt too light. He hadn’t reacted this way to someone’s advances in years. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t romantic; in fact, it made it a bit worse. Looking into that woman’s eyes had been like looking into a mirror, and suddenly it was like all the vulnerability he had buried under heaps of anger, denial and distractions was brought back to the surface. To then have someone push and pressure him, with no time to think or regroup—it had reopened a wound that Sanji didn’t think would ever heal.

The moment the smoke went into his lungs it was like his body loosened. He slumped against the wall, his breaths now deep and even. Someday, he would do something about his addiction to those damn cancer sticks, but for now he was only grateful for the easing effect they had on his psyche.

He was overreacting. He knew that. A few words, a few looks and a whole lot of unfounded assumptions on his end, that was all. He mocked himself as he finished the first cigarette, and then lit up the next one with barely a breath in between. Really. What would that shitty old man say if he saw him now, reduced to near uselessness over some crazy brat and his skittish, if very pretty, friend?

“You light up another one and I’m firing you, you damn brat,” Sanji groaned. Because _of course_ Zeff had noticed him entering the kitchen, and _of course_ he’d followed him out, and seen everything.

“Had a nice look at my breakdown, old man?” Sanji grumbled, pissed, but he put away the unlit third cig and threw the one he had just lit to the ground, grinding it to the floor.

“Eh, I give that one a three out of ten. You’ve had far more impressive breakdowns.” Sanji glared at him, but found himself relaxing. The old man’s dark humor did wonders for his mood. “And I have better things to do than watch your crazy mood swings, kid.”

“You mean, like your job?” Sanji adjusted the fit of his suit on his shoulders and dusted his back where he had been leaning against the wall. The Baratie wasn't exactly in a good neighborhood, and Sanji didn't like to think about what drunk patrons might have done against that very wall on other nights. 

“You’ve been out here fifteen minutes, brat. Your tables are getting antsy.” Zeff aimed a kick at him for emphasis, using the heavy steel-reinforced prosthetic that extended from his knee down. Sanji dodged it without thought, though it left a nice looking hole in the alley wall where his head had been. Sanji huffed. He bet they wouldn’t fine _Zeff_ for that. 

"Maybe you should hire more waiters, you cheap old man," Sanji muttered, not exactly angry. "You could always send Patty or Carne-"

"And lose half my costumers?" Sanji ducked under another kick, hands in his pockets. It was always a strange thing when Zeff tried to be comforting, because he  _really_ had no idea what he was doing, and the only way Sanji could tell he was trying anything was that his attacks were slower and easier to avoid. Still, he supposed he was just as strange, because he actually  _did_ find comfort in the gesture, however awkward.

“Thanks for nothing, you geezer,” he said, giving the old man a halfhearted glare, which was his own way of accepting the 'kindness'. Maybe he'd be back in the kitchen before the night was over. Besides, he had work to get back to, and a lady he'd practically ignored to flirt with. The night was young, and nothing had actually gone wrong, yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who reviewed and left kudos! I'm really glad there's an interest in this story. Sorry if this chapter's a bit short, the next one's going to be a lot longer. I'm curious what people will think of my Zeff, who's a bit darker than the original (then again, so is pretty much everyone on this story...)
> 
> On an unrelated note, I just bought some officially translated volumes of the manga to have as references, and I can't get used to Sanji saying 'darn' everything :/
> 
> Next chapter is Zoro's, and quite long, and will be out on Wednesday the 21st. Thanks for reading!


	3. New enemies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: this is the second, fixed version. If you read the last one, nothing major changed. Enjoy :)

Zoro didn’t know what to think of the curly-eyebrow cook. He wasn’t even sure if the man really was a cook, considering how he had greeted them at the door and taken their orders. He didn’t know much about restaurants, but he was pretty sure that cooks didn’t go out to be waiters, and waiters didn’t go into the kitchen to cook.

He was also pretty sure that waiters weren’t supposed to have such a colorful vocabulary, or to insult the costumers to their faces, repeatedly and unapologetically. Or to wantonly flirt with the only woman at the table, ignoring everyone else whenever he wasn’t insulting them.

Luffy, of course, found the whole thing hilarious. Nami seemed a bit overwhelmed by the attention, though she milked it for all she was worth by getting some specialty cocktail for free courtesy of their smitten waiter, and the promise that her share of the food would be free. Usopp was lost in the meal whenever he wasn't complaining, eating enthusiastically, and Zoro had to admit that the food was quite good.

By the time the stupid waiter was back to glorifying Nami and dismissing the three of them while getting their dessert orders, Zoro was losing his patience. Luffy had stopped asking Sanji to join during the meal, too distracted by the food. In all, it had been far too ordinary an outing, and Zoro was close to simply asking the man to fight to test his mettle. Hell, the man had been taunting them all night, it wouldn’t even be unprovoked.

He probably would have done something impulsive and stupid if it weren’t for the arrival of the police at the restaurant. An unnatural quiet spread throughout the restaurant floor, reminding Zoro of what Nami had said about the restaurant being a meeting place for criminals, and five people entered; three uniformed police officers, a man who looked to be a government official in a suit with a tall black hat and a short beard styled in a strange pattern, and a Superhero in full costume.

Sanji, who had been halfway through another declaration of his love to Nami, stopped midword to glance behind him at the intruders, not looking very concerned, only to do a double take and stare in surprise at the newcomers.

The man in the suit stepped forward and spoke into the silence. “Everyone remain seated and calm, please. If you’ll give your name and address to the officer who will pass by your tables, you will be free to-“

“I sure hope you have a warrant somewhere with you, mister officer, or else I’ll be forced to assume a bunch of thieves dressed up as policemen wandered in and exercise my right to defend private property.” The blonde waiter/cook moved forward to stand in the suited man’s way, while the other waiters around the room gave him a wide margin and disappeared into the kitchen. _Bunch of cowards_.

The Hero stepped between the official and the cook. “I’m the one that authorized this raid, kid.” He spoke around two cigars in his mouth, but Zoro would have recognized ‘Captain Smoker’ even without them. He’s seen him around the city a few times before and always made it a point to avoid him; as much as he liked fighting, he had no idea what he would do to damage a man who could turn himself into smoke at will. His Hero costume was as understated as it was ridiculous, black pants and a white fur-lined coat worn open over a bare chest, the word justice written on its back and a line of cigars strapped on his arm like grenades. He wore a white domino mask that matched his hair color, and had strapped to his back a long two-pronged staff he used as a weapon.

“How nice, but as far as I know, that without a warrant gets you absolutely fucking nothing.” The cook drawled, looking unimpressed.

“Not when you’re suspected of hiding a suspect in an on-going crime,” Said tall hat, stepping around the hero to address Sanji directly. “Such as a thief who escaped from a bank robbery and was chased right into this neighborhood,” there was something smug and superior about the man’s smile. Zoro turned to glance at Nami, just as Usopp and Luffy did.

“I’ve been with you idiots all day!” She hissed back in response.

“This is a very poor excuse for a raid, you shitty officer,” The cook ground out, crossing his arms. “You think you’ll find something where your three predecessors didn’t?”

_Oi, don’t provoke him, idiot,_ Zoro thought. He might be able to pass as a regular law-abiding citizen, but Luffy had grown a bit of a criminal reputation already, and Nami was a wanted thief, if not _the_ wanted thief they were after. If anyone recognized them, they would have to fight their way out, and while normally that would be a fun prospect, Smoker’s presence made that far too risky, especially as he and Luffy would have to cover Nami and Usopp.

“Then let my men do their jobs, and we’ll be out of here that much sooner, mister…” The man left it open for the cook to introduce himself, but instead the man started yelling towards the kitchen.

“Hey, old man! Are you going to leave all this to me or get up and deal with this fucking mess?” There was no reply to his words, so he continued, “I mean, I can deal with it, probably, tough right now it feels like it would involve a lot of broken furniture and angry policemen and—“

The door to the kitchen opened, and out came flying a plate that flew straight into the yelling cook’s head. A man in chef’s clothes and hat limped out of the kitchen.

“What was that for?” The cook yelled, rubbing his head.

“For making more problems for my restaurant, you damn brat.” The old man had a long moustache tied up in braids to both sides of his head, and from his strange limping gait Zoro knew there was something wrong with his right leg. Once he was standing next to the younger cook he turned his attention to the men that were still crowded together at the entrance to the restaurant. It said something about the place’s reputation that they were waiting for their superiors to deal with the threats before moving.

“Are you the restaurant’s owner?” Tall hat asked.

"That's me," the old man agreed.

"We're here to-"

"Look for a bank-robbing fugitive, yeah, I heard." The old chef turned his head halfway back towards the kitchen and yelled at the waiters to come out. Two men and one woman wearing the aprons that all waiters (with the exception of curly-eyebrow) wore came out, looking nervous and sheepish.

"If you'll just tell your employee to step aside and let us-"

"I'm trying to make your life easier here, kid," the chef cut him off for the second time. Tall hat's smile was starting to look more annoyed than smug. "These servers here have been working all night, and they have seen everybody that came in through the front doors. Your boys can interview them to their heart’s desire, and they can show you around inside to make sure no one snuck in the back. There's no need to bother my innocent, paying customers that could have had nothing to do with such a crime, as they've all been here for at least the last hour, especially when you're after such a specific target."

Zoro had to give the man credit—he was being a pain in the ass while playing at full cooperation. Tall hat looked to have come to the same conclusion, if his flat stare and acquiescence was anything to go by. He ordered his underlings to go with the servers as the chef suggested, crossed his arms, and moved to stand closer to curly-eyebrow.

Smoker, meanwhile, was ignoring the exchange and instead taking a good long look at everyone in the restaurant. Nami had retrieved her scarf from the chair and used it to cover her face, angling her face down at the table and watching everything from the corner of her eye.

Luffy, the idiot, was watching openly like it was an interesting television show, head swiveling each time someone spoke. Usopp placed his hand on the back of Luffy's head and shoved it down, hissing into his ears warnings and his usual tirade of 'this is why people wear masks!'

The sudden move had the opposite of its intended effect, drawing Smoker's eye toward them. Zoro leaned back into his chair, his right hand brushing against the hilt of his swords, his mind entering that wonderful relaxed/tense state the way it always did just before a fight. He took in everything that happened in the room, from the nervous shuffling of several other customers, to the meek passage of a waiter followed by a cop, to tall hat, saying something quietly to curly-eyebrow that made him turn pale, while the old chef beside him looked confused.

Mostly, though, he took in Smoker, and the way the Superhero's eyes narrowed and he bit down harder on his cigars.

"A straw hat... and a scar under his left eye…" He said, quite loudly, and Luffy pushed Usopp's hand away to stand, a crazy grin on his face. Zoro, oddly enough, found a matching one forming in his own. It didn't matter that logic dictated this was a bad idea, that Nami and Usopp were vulnerable and that neither he nor Luffy had any idea how to hurt the super, all he could feel was the excitement of a good challenge.

"Do you know me, mister?" Luffy asked, crossing his arms.

"The rising star responsible for Axe-hand's fall and damaging no fewer than 25 homes and stores in Orange district last week," Smoker recited, like he was reminding himself of Luffy's crimes before committing to a fight.

Luffy grinned. "I'm going to be the man that saves the world!" It was the same crazy statement he had been making since before Zoro had met him, and it made as little sense now as it did the first time he heard it, but there was something infectious about the absolute confidence with which he spoke it.

"Time to fight, boss?" Zoro asked casually, pushing his chair back so he would have an easier time attacking. Nami and Usopp were looking at them like they were crazy, and Zoro could only hope they had the sense to run once the fight started.

“Luffy, Zoro, what are you doing?” Usopp whispered to them hurriedly. “He’s _Captain Smoker_ , not some back alley super!”

“If someone like him can stop me, then I won’t be able to reach my dream,” Luffy said, cracking his knuckles. His smile was as wide and confident as ever, but there was an undercurrent of tension there that only ever showed up when he was serious. _At least he’s not underestimating Smoker_. Luffy could sometimes be bafflingly ignorant about other supers.

“You kids really have no luck, running into me when you’re just starting out,” Smoker said, standing straighter, something too predatory to be called a smile spreading on his face. “I have never let a criminal super get away, and you won’t be the first!” The man, still standing a few paces away near the Baratie’s entrance, threw a punch. Zoro launched himself to his feet and drew his swords—he’d seen footage in the news of the man’s attacks, and knew that to stay still was to be caught.

Smoker’s punch expanded outward in a whirl of white smoke that surrounded Luffy around his middle faster than he could react. Zoro took a sliding step to the left and cut upwards with the blade in his left hand, causing a line in the solid smoke around Luffy to dissipate. Luffy used the chance to twist out of Smoker’s hold, and then spun with the motion to get some momentum and throw out his own punch, his fist stretching across the room only to go right through Smoker’s body and break the window behind him. Where a restaurant window breaking outward into the street would have caused a chorus of screams and panic anywhere in the city above, none was heard outside; the underground had more of a ‘see nothing, say nothing, and move on’ attitude. 

Inside the restaurant was a different deal. The other costumers had all decided that it was smarter to get away from the fighting supers, which, since they were still close to the restaurant entrance, meant that a cascade of people were trying to get out through the kitchens, which the cooks apparently didn’t appreciate, if the sounds of yelling and breaking things were anything to go by. Luffy pulled his arm back and his hand snapped back into place, and Zoro took the chance to get his third sword out of its hilt and into his mouth.

He felt annoyed at himself. It had been years since the last time Zoro had been near a logia fruit-type user, and it showed in his reaction time. Smoker had grabbed Luffy before he’d even cleared his sword’s scabbard. He narrowed his eyes and focus, but before he could start an attack he heard a sickening _crack_ and felt something hard smash against the back of his head and throw him to the floor.

“Zoro!” Nami screamed. Zoro scrambled to his knees, his vision a little spinning and his head pounding in time with his pulse. He could feel something warm dripping down the back of his neck. _Damn,_ he thought, his jaw tightening against his sword. He hadn’t even seen the attack. Nami had assembled her bo staff and stood next to him, hands trembling slightly, looking like she was a second away from bolting. Luffy was throwing a constant stream of attacks towards Smoker, which resulted in nothing more than a lot of smashed furniture and floorboards as the super simply turned parts of his body into smoke to evade the attacks. Zoro got to his feet, but a wave of nausea made him pause, and he could only watch as Smoker materialized next to Luffy and hit him in the side of the head with an elbow, throwing him against Usopp, who had been trying to sneak up on the super with a table leg in hand. They fell in a tangle of limbs, Usopp likely worse off than Luffy.

Zoro parceled off the pain in his head into a corner he could deal with later and went straight into an attack, crossing both arms in front of his chest before launching forward to cut at the enemy super. His attack did as much damage as Luffy’s had, but now Zoro found himself surrounded in the thick smoke of his opponent, with no idea where the next attack would come from. A cold shiver ran up his spine. He had known Smoker was good, probably better than him and Luffy, but he hadn’t expected the gap to be this large. This felt less like a fight and more like being toyed with, and that was a feeling Zoro had thought he was past having.

“Give it up!” the super yelled, and Zoro barely reacted in time to parry a strike from the man’s metal staff, aimed at his ribs. The staff slid across his blade with a loud screech, but he didn’t see the fist that followed right after, getting him low in the stomach and nearly dropping him to his knees. He swiped his sword upward, turning the hand to smoke, which joined the rest of Smoker’s body as it swirled into a column and flew at Luffy, who had just stood back up. The iron staff connected solidly with Luffy’s temple, dropping him senseless to the floor. A foot kicked out and smashed into Usopp’s nose, the familiar sound of breaking cartilage reaching Zoro even at that distance. Nami was beside them in a moment, swinging her staff wildly, but just as Smoker’s head and torso solidified behind her, his empty left hand ready to grab onto her head, a blur of black flew into the super; the waiter-cook, his kick missing its target but turning him to smoke before he could get Nami.

“How about you leave the lady be, Hero?” Curly-brow asked, following the column of smoke with his eyes as Smoker took solid form again in front of him. He said the last word like an insult.

“Woman or not, she’s with them, kid. Step aside or you’ll share their fate.” Smoker looked exactly as he’d done when their fight started, his two smoking cigars still in his mouth, his eyes invisible beneath the white mask. Curly-brow, now standing between him and an unconscious Luffy, a panicking Nami and a whimpering Usopp almost back on his feet, smiled. There was an unlit cigarette in his mouth, and his hands were inside his pockets. He turned his head to look at the distant wall, where Zoro saw the old chef, tall hat, and two of the regular police officers staying out of the way. Whatever he saw there, his smile gained a bitter edge.

“I’d like to listen to you, really,” he said, as he turned away further and went down on one knee next to Luffy. “The problem is, a true gentleman couldn’t stand back and let a lady get hurt,” without hesitating, he hoisted Luffy onto his shoulder and stood. “Run, you idiots!” He yelled, turning and grabbing Nami’s hand before jumping out a window, dragging both her and Luffy with him. Zoro and Usopp hesitated barely a moment before following, while Captain Smoker became a pillar of smoke that chased after them.

Zoro had no idea why curly-brow had decided to help them, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He was painfully aware now of the difference in strength between the Superhero and them, and though defeat left a taste like death in his mouth, he knew their only hope now was to somehow escape.

The cook turned a corner right outside the restaurant, ducking beneath the twisting column of smoke that shot out at him and hit the wall behind, still dragging Nami along behind him. Usopp turned the corner right after, his steps a little unsteady, with Zoro just behind them.

They turned another corner seconds later, but the smoke that was the superhero stayed right behind them. Did curly-brow have a plan to lose him? Zoro barely dodged a string of smoke that tried to wrap around his foot, slashing down in a circle so Smoker wouldn’t get a chance to turn solid. He saw another one curling towards Usopp, and put on an extra burst of speed to slash at the ground and protect his friend.

They made another couple of seemingly random turns, going into narrow alleys and down paths Zoro wouldn’t have noticed if he’d been on his own. All the while, they kept barely free of Smoker’s grasp. The pounding in Zoro’s head had grown worse, and he could see Usopp losing energy. All it would take was a single misstep and they would be caught.

“Miss, please tell me you can swim,” curly-brow asked Nami, turning this time down a narrow stairwell.

“Swim?” Nami panted, then nodded. “Wait, do you mean-“

“Whoa!” the cook pulled her closer to him and spun around another of Smoker’s attacks. “Just remember to hold your breath!” He turned into another corner, this one even narrower, but when Zoro turned down the same way he saw an empty alley. He stumbled forward a few steps, running into an equally confused Usopp, before he lost his footing on something slimy and fell, taking Usopp down with him, only instead of the crashing to the ground they kept falling, and Zoro had just enough time to see the broken metal grating into which he’d fallen before he was immersed in icy water.

Panic nearly drowned him before he fought his damned devil-fruit heritage into a corner of his mind and gained control of his limbs back, quickly stuffing his swords back into their sheaths. He’d just managed to secure them before he was slammed into the river floor. He shut his mouth tight against letting any water in and righted himself so he was moving with the swift current of the underground river into which he’d fallen—into which curly-brow had led them, which was clever, if annoying with no warning—and kicked off the floor so he could lift his head above the surface for a few breaths.

The tunnel that covered the river was wide and dark, with the only illumination the light from the underground city above them that came through the periodic grates spaced along the tunnel’s roof. It was probably better to call it a cavern than a tunnel, given the jagged walls bordering the river. The current was fast and choppy, but he was a good enough swimmer to keep himself above water and near the center. He saw Usopp struggling a little just behind him, Nami at his side helping him stay afloat with an arm around his waist. Zoro looked around hurriedly, remembering too late that Luffy had fallen in as well. He was a fruit user, he would lose his mind or drown or—

He breathed again when he saw the straw hat, now pulled back so it was held by its string along his friend’s neck, Luffy’s unconscious form held up in the water by his arm pulled across the neck of the blonde cook. Luffy twitched, his arm tightening a bit around curly-brow’s neck before the cook gave him a merciless elbow to the face.

“Hey, he’s _your_ problem, swordsman!” curly-brow yelled when he saw Zoro watching him. Zoro grunted and swam closer. When he was next to them he took Luffy’s other arm and draped him over his back, so that Luffy’s weight was spread on his back and his head hung beside Zoro’s and he could hold on to Luffy’s arms out front with one hand.

“How far does this go?” He asked the cook.

“There’s a few dams along the way,” he replied. “We just have to get to one.” Curly-brow was a good swimmer, getting some distance from Zoro as soon as he had Luffy settled, though he kept looking at Luffy distrustfully. So, he’d seen a devil-fruit user in the water before, had he?

It had been a smart move, Zoro reflected as he swam with Luffy on his back, occasionally checking to see that Nami and Usopp were keeping up. The only universal weakness that devil-fruit users had, and that devil-born shared to a lesser degree, was the hydrophobia brought on by large bodies of water. Smoker, as a Superhero, couldn’t risk the madness that came with getting so close to a river, not for a group of weak rookie villains. It was almost suspiciously convenient that curly-brow had taken them straight here, but that was a matter to deal with later.

For now, they had to reach shore before Luffy woke. Everything else could wait until then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thanks for reading and leaving kudos and especially reviewing, these are what keep me writing :)
> 
> A couple of notes on the story: in case anyone was confused, 'super' is the blanket term for everyone more than human, which includes both active fruit users and devil-born. Superhero, or Hero, is an official government job, and they have to be trained and licensed properly (they also get equivalent military ranks, but that will come up later). Not every Superhero is super.
> 
> Next chapter will be on Saturday the 24th, and will be Nami's. Oh, and if anyone figured out who tall hat is, congrats, you get bonus points :)


	4. Recovering and Breaking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for oblique mentions of past abuse

Nami was exhausted. As soon as they all entered their building and the heavy metal door was safely shut behind them, she collapsed into the couch in the living area, not even having the energy to make it up to her room. She heard Usopp follow suit on the armchair, while Zoro dropped a lightly snoring Luffy to the ground and leaned heavily against the back of the couch. Sanji, the overly-flirtatious cook that had helped them get away from Smoker for reasons unknown (and no, she did not believe it had been ‘to be a gentleman’), stayed by the door, slumping against the wall beside it.

They were all still soaked from their impromptu swim in the river. Nami shuddered to think of all the crap they might have been swimming beside—East City might be considered the weakest of the Great Five in terms of supers, but it was the second most polluted. She felt a bit of energy return at the thought of taking a nice long shower, but even that wasn’t enough to do more than roll over so that she was on her side and could look at everyone in the room at once.

“What… were you idiots… thinking!” She didn’t think she had the reserves to scold the two muscle-brained fools, but the words were out of her mouth without consulting her brain. Luffy stopped snoring, twitching strangely on the ground before suddenly arching his back right off the floor and gasping. _That_ got Nami to sit up and scoot away.

“He’s… he’s out of the water now,” Usopp said, looking pleadingly at Zoro for reassurance. Zoro had also tensed, but hadn’t backed away. Instead, he moved closer, one hand on the hilt of his swords while the other rolled Luffy over so he could start coughing up water.

“His body knows it was in the water,” Zoro explained. “It’s just a delayed reaction, he shouldn’t go… well, crazy.”

“You know a lot about water-logged supers?” Sanji asked, the sarcasm obvious. Zoro shot him a dirty look over his shoulder.

“I know enough, curly-brow. How about you help me out here, since you were the one to jump into the water with him?” Sanji made a face at the nickname and hesitated. His eyes went around the room, taking it and all of them in before he apparently made a decision. His shoulders slumped and he dug around in his suit pockets for a cigarette, which he put into his mouth but made no moves to try and light it. Nami couldn’t decide if that was logical, since it would be too wet to light, or crazy, because why would anyone put a gross, soggy cigarette into their mouths?

He walked over to where Zoro knelt next to Luffy. “You do realize you’d all be in jail if I hadn’t done that, right?” He crouched down closer. “What should I do?”

“Hold him down,” Zoro said darkly. Luffy’s coughs had stopped, but now he was shaking. Zoro rolled him over onto his back and pulled his arms up, then held on to each of his wrists and leaned down on them with the weight of his body. Sanji followed suit, kneeling on top of each of Luffy’s feet, just in time to hold Luffy down when his eyes snapped open and his back arched again. He opened his mouth and screamed, loud and wordless, eyes open but blank. Nami swallowed back bile but couldn’t look away. _This_ was the true curse of the devil-fruits, more than the changed personalities and physical appearances. The hydrophobia that turned off their rational minds and had them destroy anything in their vicinity, to turn into ‘devils’.

Sanji made a strange noise when Luffy made another move to break free, trying to pull his arm away from Zoro but only stretching it out. “I thought I saw, back at—what the hell is he?”

“A rubber human,” Zoro answered, pulling the hand back into place and fighting against more of Luffy’s mindless twisting.

“….Some devil fruits are really bizarre, you know?” Sanji had to bear down as Luffy bucked against them again, screaming.

Luffy gave one final shudder, then his body went limp and his eyes closed. Zoro relaxed. “It was just an echo, like I said. That should be it.” Sanji let go of Luffy’s feet warily. When Luffy made no other move he stood again and pulled the thoroughly chewed-on cigarette from his mouth.

“I don’t suppose any of you smoke?” He asked, looking up at them hopefully. At their negative response, he sighed and stuffed the cigarette into his pocket.

An awkward silence filled the room. Zoro had gotten to his feet and was going into the kitchen, presumably to get their first aid kid to patch up Usopp and himself.

“H-hey,” Nami said, still a little shaken up about Luffy but determined to move on. The cook turned to look at her. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your help back at the restaurant, but… why?”

“Any man would be lucky to have the opportunity to help out such a wonderful-“

“Like hell you just went against Captain fucking Smoker for a girl you just met,” Zoro interrupted his flowery speech loudly from the kitchen. Sanji’s infatuated smile dropped off his face in an instant as he glared towards the swordsman.

“It was _a_ reason, you stupid moss head,” Sanji snapped. “The real question is why I helped the rest of you.”

“Er… why did you?” Usopp asked, his voice stuffy as he held his nose gingerly shut.

Sanji huffed and ran a hand through still-damp hair. “Because if I’d left you all alone you would have destroyed the old man’s restaurant in your pointless fight.”

Nami thought about that. It was an answer she liked better than ‘chivalry’, but not by a lot. Going up against a super of Smoker’s caliber wasn’t simply risking jail; Superheroes were authorized to use lethal force where they felt necessary, and about a tenth of all criminal supers that lost to heroes were dead by the end of the fight. Not only that, but such a move in front of not only the Hero but cops as well assured that he was now a criminal, which meant there was no going back to his job on the very restaurant he’d been trying to save.

“Then why didn’t you just give us up once we were outside?” Zoro asked. He carried their white first aid kit with him and made his way over to Usopp, groaning on the couch.

Sanji blinked at that, like it was an option he had never considered. “I wasn’t going to do the superidiot’s job for him.” He said, slowly, an unspoken insult to Zoro’s intelligence clear in the look he was giving him.

“You went straight for that open access to the river,” Nami noted, another thing that had been bothering her. “While going through a labyrinth of turns and alleys, but you never hit a dead end.”

“You noticed!” Sanji said happily, giving her a lovesick smile. “Ah, I didn’t know you had been watching me so closely ~”

Nami leaned a little away from the overly-enthusiastic cook. Still, she wouldn’t be herself if she couldn’t use a bit of infatuation for her own ends. “Won’t you tell me how it was you knew where to go, Sanji?”

“It was my emergency being-chased-by-supers escape plan,” Sanji said, looking stupidly happy to be talking with Nami. “I have a few of those set up just in case.”

Nami was a little impressed with the answer, despite herself. It took a special kind of personality to plan for something as unusual as ‘being chased by a powerful super from my workplace’. Then again, considering the kind of service he’d offered to everyone at the table but herself, maybe it wasn’t all that unusual. All the same, it was ballsy—there was a difference between having a contingency plan and actually using it.

“How did you know he wouldn’t just post police at the dams where we could climb out?” Nami asked. They both paused as Usopp made an unhappy sound halfway between a whimper and a scream. Zoro had tilted his head back and snapped the programmer’s long nose back into place, causing a stream of fresh blood to flow from it. He then took some gauze from the first aid kit and helped Usopp pack it into his nostrils.

Sanji was watching the treatment with a distracted frown on his face. Without saying anything he went into the kitchen. From her angle, Nami could see him take a few seconds to look around and orient himself before going for the fridge, and returning to the main room a little later with a bag of frozen peas and a wash cloth.

“You’re out of ice,” he mentioned, getting close enough to Usopp and Zoro to give them the bag.

“… thanks,” Zoro said, looking as confused as Nami felt. Sanji ignored him and moved back closer to the main door.

“I’m so sorry, lovely Nami, I didn’t hear you. What did you ask?” He turned back to Nami suddenly, looking guilty.

“I, uh, how did you know they wouldn’t get us when we got out of the river?” Nami was getting the feeling that she wasn’t going to understand the cook and his motives, even if he was perfectly open and honest with her.

“Oh, that’s simple. There’s far too many places that can be used as exits, and there wouldn’t be enough time for anyone to get the police into place. Not that they would mobilize something like that for a small-time super like him.” He nodded at Luffy’s still form. Nami frowned, but really was annoyed at herself—she should have figured that much out herself. She must be more shaken up than she realized.

“Well… thank you,” she said. The genuine smile that spread at her words lit up his face like nothing before had, making Nami think for the first time since they’d met that he was actually a little cute. _No_ , she scolded herself quickly _, he’s devil-born. Another species entirely. He is not ‘_ cute’ _._

“What will you do now?” Zoro cut in, stoic as usual. With Usopp leaning back into the armchair with the frozen peas pressed up against his nose, the swordsman had turned to his own injuries, peeling off his damp shirt to reveal a nasty dark bruise just below his ribs, which he felt along gingerly. Nami remembered the first blow he had received, right to the back of his head from that metal staff.

“Stay low for a while,” Sanji said, the earlier smile gone as if it had never existed. As Nami got up to help Zoro patch up his head (knowing the idiot, he’d just wrap some bandages around it like that actually _did_ something), Sanji took a box of cigarettes from his pocket and put them on top of the counter that connected the kitchen to the main room. “With any luck this will blow over in a few weeks.”

Nami couldn’t help giving him an ‘are you serious?’ look. “You attacked a Superhero. In front of witnesses, who happened to be the police. How will that ‘blow over’ in a few weeks?”

“Are you worried about me?” he smiled, but now that Nami had seen the real thing, she could see the fake one for what it was. “I didn’t land a hit, and they won’t bother hunting me down just for that. Worst case scenario, I might have to spend a few months in jail,” he gave a tiny shudder at that, one Nami barely spotted.

Nami gave a disbelieving shake of her head at his optimistic assessment, but didn’t argue against it. She picked up the wash cloth Sanji had left and parted Zoro’s hair, looking for the injury.

“Oi, you don’t have to do that,” Zoro tried to duck away from her attention, but a quick slap to the head had him swaying in place and Nami none-too-gently treating the gash that was still sluggishly bleeding. Again, some part of her wouldn’t stop reminding her that he was _devil-born_ , that he would be fine even without treatment, since he had survived the attack, but another part of her could only remember the way he had put himself in harm’s way for her before, during the Buggy debacle, and that supers felt pain as much as regular humans did, even if they were harder to kill.

“Wah!” The loud yell made everyone jump. Zoro was on his feet with a sword half-drawn as Luffy sat up suddenly, looking around wildly. “Smoke! Where’s Smokey?” He yelled, getting to his feet, turning around, then falling down again.

“Luffy!” Zoro snapped. “Look around, idiot, we’re home!”

Luffy did as Zoro said, from his position on the ground. He looked over each one of them, like he was making sure they were real and safe and there, before his gaze stopped on Sanji and froze. “Hey!” He sat up quickly, an excited smile spreading on his face. “You joined us!”

“I most certainly did not,” Sanji snapped back. “If you hadn’t been such an idiot as to pick a fight with a fucking Hero _inside_ my fucking restaurant—“

“But you’re here,” Luffy said, crossing his arms like that settled it.

“And he helped us get away after Smoker put you down,” Zoro commented. Nami looked quickly at him. Was she imagining it, or was that a mischievous glint in his eyes?

“What?” Luffy’s head turned quickly from Zoro to Sanji and back, his eyes grown wider and his smile broader.

“He carried you away himself,” Nami added, catching on to Zoro’s game. Having been caught up in Luffy’s pace as often as they had, it was amusing to watch it turned on someone else. Luffy jumped to his feet and cheered, giving Sanji a hug which he clearly had no idea how to respond to. Sanji gave her a theatrical look of betrayal.

“Neh, Sanji, now that you’re one of us, could you make us some food?” Luffy asked, releasing the other man and giving him a friendly pat on the arm.

Nami stifled a laugh. The poor cook had no idea whose eye he had caught this morning.

“Alright,” Sanji agreed easily. “But I haven’t joined your ‘crew’, mind you.” Nami and Zoro stared. _Did he just… what?_ Sanji unbuttoned his suit coat, took it off and hung it off the chair at the counter. Beneath it he wore a long sleeved, light blue dress shirt with stripes, and he rolled up his sleeves to his elbows as he moved away from Luffy and the door. “I can use your kitchen?”

“Mmhmm,” Luffy followed him across the main room like a hungry puppy.

“Did he just…” Nami whispered. Usopp tried to snort, but wound up whining and pressing the peas closer to his face in pain.

“That’s one way to deal with Luffy,” Zoro muttered, also following the two with his eyes.

“Anyone else think we just let another crazy person into this house?” Usopp said.

“Maybe Luffy did know what he was doing,” Nami said, having to raise her voice to be heard over Luffy’s loud stream of food suggestions. “He’ll fit right in.”

 -*-*-*-*-

That night, Nami sat in the chair she always left beside her room’s window, her phone in her hand, wrapped up in a couple of blankets to fight against the chill air that the old building did little to combat. She leaned her face against the icy window, looking up into the dark cloudy sky, and tried to make the decision she knew she must.

She had been gone too long already, had grown too comfortable among Luffy and his friends. The fight at Baratie proved that; what had she been thinking, trying to attack Smoker like that? The Nami from a month before would have mocked her. She had acted without thinking, simply wanting to protect Luffy and Usopp, but that only made everything worse. She was supposed to put her own freedom and survival above all else. Always, but especially above the resilient lives of supers.

Tears came to her eyes as she forced herself to confront the fact that she actually cared for these idiots she should hate, and they fell when she admitted that it didn’t matter in the slightest. Arlong still had all the power over her life, and her sister’s, and she wasn’t so naïve as to believe that having friends was the solution to her situation. If she told them…

If she told them…

She imagined Luffy going still, his face turning serious, and declaring he was going to beat up Arlong for her. She imagined Zoro, stoic as always, but steadfastly supporting their boss’s decision, and quietly supporting her where she might need it. She imagined Usopp, afraid and barely keeping it together, but promising to do anything he could to get her out from under Arlong’s control. Sanji was too new for her to predict, but going by his impulsiveness so far, she could imagine him joining in for no reason she could phantom.

Yes, they would all offer to help her. And they would all be broken for it. Just like Genzo. He was still alive, though she thought he wished he weren’t. He wasn’t the last one to try and ‘save’ her, but what people didn’t understand was that Arlong wasn’t just an incredibly strong super—he was also ruthless, well-connected, and rich. It didn’t matter that he was a criminal; murderer, pimp, extortionist and thief, to name a few.  He played the political game extremely well, and was even mayor of her whole district. He knew when to play at lawful citizen, when to bribe, and when to threaten. There was no way this group of violent misfits could take him down, because they simply weren’t capable of thinking on the right scale.

The fight with Smoker had made _that_ clearer as well. So no, she wouldn’t tell them. Because she _did_ like them, however much she wished she didn’t, and she wasn’t sure she could live with herself if she caused the smiles to be forever taken from their faces.

She knew what she had to do. She lifted her hand to look at the text she’d received last night. It was from Arlong, in a code she’d memorized years ago. She bit her lip and wrote a reply. A plan began to form in her mind, and she ignored the aching in her chest it caused. She had to leave them, and she had to leave them in such a way that they would hate her and wouldn’t look for her again. She had to cut off _all_ ties with them, for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you have the time, please leave a review, it helps me know what works and doesn't in the story (I'll confess to some insecurity in action/fight scenes) :)
> 
> I've run out of the stockpiled chapters, so after the next chapter's out on Wednesday the 28th, the rate will go down to once a week (it might go back up during November, if I decide to participate in Nanowrimo with this). 
> 
> Next time is Nami's betrayal as witnessed by Sanji!


	5. Falling apart already?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta'd by Zarewin, thank you so much!

Sanji was up and looking around the building before the sun had risen. He had a few options in hiding places to stay at around the city, investigated in advance, but given that he was offered a room in the old, abandoned factory that Luffy’s crew had turned into their home base, he didn’t think it a bad idea to at least stay the night.

The place was large—far larger than its tiny, squalid exterior would have led one to guess. In the city above it was a single story building in the Syrup Village neighborhood, in a mostly abandoned industrial sector, but the building expanded downward three levels, and the living areas the group had made for themselves were at the lowest. The main central room, with the couch and tv, was in the center beneath an open space that subtended all subterranean levels, with a narrow walkway and ladders leading to the higher levels by the sides. That room had two openings to the kitchen; one was a door and the other the counter that doubled as a dining table. The bottom floor also opened to a room that Sanji assumed was a gym, going by the old weights and worn bench inside.

The rooms the others lived in were in higher levels; he had seen Nami go all the way up to the surface for hers, while Usopp’s and Zoro’s were in the second lowest, and Luffy’s in the third. Sanji had taken an unfurnished room in Luffy’s level, and been loaned a mattress and some covers from a storage room in the second level. Even with everyone having a room to themselves and Sanji taking a new one, there were still three unused rooms in the building, which Luffy had excitedly told him last night were in preparation for the rest of his crew once he found them. 

As Sanji explored the second empty room—this one filled inexplicably with boxes of office supplies—he tried to think about his options. Going back to the Baratie was out, and not only for the reasons Nami had pointed out last night. That damn spy had recognized him, and he had far more leverage on Sanji than Sanji did on him.  He would rather never show up in the man’s radar again, but that would mean either never returning to the old man’s restaurant or waiting until Rob fucking Lucci moved on to his next assignment, hopefully in a completely different city.

All of his evacuation plans were designed for the short term. He might be a good fighter, and pick more fights at the restaurant than he really should, but there were some lines he never crossed, and as such he was usually very careful to call too much attention to himself (except for those damn journalists that had latched on to the Baratie’s stories over the years). In the past, all he would do was stay out of sight for a couple of weeks to let whoever’s outrage burn itself out, and then return to work like nothing had happened. He’d never angered a Superhero before, though. Then again, surely a Hero of Smoker’s stature would have better things to do than chase down an annoying, rebellious sous chef.

With the spy in the mix, things became a lot more complicated. There was no way the spy would just leave Sanji alone, not after finding him again after all these years. Sanji’s exile would have to be far longer than usual, and he needed to let Zeff know that he would have to get himself a new sous chef for the near future. That last thought turned Sanji’s stomach. He had no idea what the old man would say about it, but the Baratie had been born out of both of their tireless efforts, even if it had been Zeff’s idea originally. At the same time, he couldn’t deny that a part of him felt almost giddy at the thought of being free from the place.

The Baratie was, at the same time, a dream come true and the place where his nightmares could never be forgotten. Zeff had never demanded that Sanji stay, but it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. They’d both been through the same hell nine years ago, and that was a bond that tied them closer than family.

“You are being way too dramatic,” Sanji muttered to himself, shaking his head and leaving the unoccupied room behind. He searched his pockets for a cigarette, but remembered he’d left them to dry on the counter last night. He went down to the common and picked one up, grimacing a little at the taste of city river, but he didn’t want to wait to go out and buy a new pack. He lit it, leaning against the counter and enjoying the feeling of his muscles relaxing as the smoke filled his lungs, despite its shitty taste (not _literally_ shitty, luckily).

As he smoked, he drew his cellphone from his pocket, staring at the crappy piece of plastic he’d bought only a few weeks before. Would it still work after his little swim last night? It was barely capable of calls and texting to begin with, but maybe that was a factor in its favor—no complicated electronics to get messed up. He hit the home button and was mildly surprised that the screen flashed on. There were no numbers under his contacts, and precious few calls in its history. He and Zeff both changed phones and numbers every month, with very few people being kept up to date on the changes.

The sudden ringing of his phone started Sanji. He stared at the string of numbers calling him, not recognizing them, but that was hardly a surprise. It was probably Zeff, not wanting to call from his current phone in case he was in custody, or worse. There was a small chance of it being the police, but he dismissed it quickly. No one he’d trusted with his number would give it up to them so fast.

Still, he hesitated to pick up. He still didn’t know what to say, and hadn’t come to any decision other than ‘stay the hell away from the crazy spy’.  He couldn’t ignore Zeff, though. He looked around the empty kitchen area and answered.

“Two, three,” he said right away, a code that only Zeff would understand. He listened to static on the other end for a few seconds before the old man’s voice replied.

“Five, you stupid brat.” A part of Sanji relaxed. A number first instead of a letter meant they were fine, and free. His second number, below ten, meant he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t be overheard, while Zeff’s lack of a second number meant he was somewhere private. They were both a bit paranoid, truth be told, but it made them both sleep easier, so neither ever mentioned it.

“How bad?” Sanji asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

“What do you think? Half the room will need to be rebuilt, and the kitchen is a mess. The government guy said that the insurance should cover it, since it happened with a Superhero around, but you know how those assholes are.” Sanji could hear the old man pacing, his prosthetic leg making the soft _click_ he’d grown used to over the last nine years. “ _You_ _’ll_ have to stay gone for a while. That super’s after you like a dog with a bone, and government guy was asking a lot of probing questions.”

He knew that Zeff was giving him space to explain himself, but his relationship with the spy was one thing he didn’t want to talk to anyone about. It was bad enough that Zeff suspected anything. He decided to focus on the more immediate, and incomprehensible threat. “The Hero’s after _me_?”

“Apparently, he knows little about the other members of that little band, so you’re the thread he’s using to get to them.” Sanji felt his heart sink. He didn’t follow Superheroes too closely, but Captain Smoker had quickly made a name for himself as a relentless hound whenever he caught a scent. Sanji had hoped he’d be ignored while the Hero chased after Luffy or Zoro, but it seemed like Smoker had made the same assumption as Luffy and put Sanji together with the group.

“Shit,” Sanji bit his cigarette.

“You somewhere safe?” Zeff wouldn’t ask where he was, not over the phone, nor would he suggest Sanji turn himself in. They both knew all too well how a fugitive at the government’s complete mercy could ‘vanish’.

“Safe enough,” this was clearly the group’s safe house, which they’d kept hidden at least this far. Then again, they hadn’t been chased by Smoker before yesterday. “Nowhere that can be connected to me, anyway,”

“Let’s keep it that way,” the call had already gone on too long, Sanji knew. Damn, and they hadn’t really figured out anything.  “Don’t die, Sanji.”

It was rare enough for the old man to use his name; worse for him to use their old good luck phrase. His eyes burned, but he fought against the sudden nostalgic tears. “Don’t die,” he repeated in a near whisper and hung up the phone. He’d find a safer way to contact him later.

It was with a heart at once lighter and heavier that Sanji opened up his cheap phone and took out the battery, snapped the phone in half, then threw all the parts into the trash. When he turned back to the kitchen, he was surprised to see Zoro, of all people, having come down while he spoke and taken a seat on the living room side of the counter.

They stared at each other in terse silence as Sanji wondered how much the swordsman had overheard, and Zoro stared blankly at him. Sanji still didn’t know much about the super, other than his Moon Colosseum record (fifteen fights, no losses), his fighting style (three-swords), and that he was an annoying shit. Out of everyone in the group he seemed the most suspicious of Sanji, and that was including Nami, who had looked at him like a mouse to a cat for half the night.

“You’re still here,” Zoro said, the first to break their silence.

“It’s not like I can go to work,” Sanji replied, glaring at him, taking the cigarette from his mouth and snuffing it out against the sink. Seeing as none of the building’s inhabitants were smokers, he figured they wouldn’t be all too happy to have him stinking up the place. His eyes slid to the cookware he’d washed after dinner last night, and his fingers suddenly itched again, not for a smoke but with the desire to cook.

He always thought better when he was cooking. It could calm him down even better than a smoke, if he was in the right state of mind.

“The longer you stay here, the harder it will be to leave,” Zoro said, his voice still even, like he couldn’t care less what Sanji did. “And you said you didn’t want to join-“

“I’ll make breakfast,” Sanji interrupted, which got him an angry twitch of the eyebrow from Zoro.

“You realize Luffy’s like a dog; once you start feeding him, he’ll never leave you alone.” Sanji shrugged. He liked cooking, and it was always better when the person he cooked for appreciated the food, so he didn’t see Luffy’s enthusiasm as anything negative. The problem was more that he had a tendency to go all in whenever he made a commitment, and he didn’t want to commit to a kid’s crew when he knew next to nothing about them.

Zoro was silent as Sanji searched through the kitchen’s meager pantry, enjoying the creative challenge it offered. After he had some eggs frying and was mixing some pancake batter, he chanced a glance at the counter only to see the crown of messy green hair sunk into the swordsman’s arms, and his shoulders rising and falling steadily in sleep. It surprised him a little—did he really trust Sanji enough to fall asleep in his presence, or did he not register Sanji as a threat?

Or maybe it was simply one of his devil-born traits? He had seen far stranger things than narcolepsy affect his kind. Sanji himself was… well… he controlled his abnormalities well enough, he thought.

He didn’t feel like cooking next to a sleeping idiot, though, so the next time he passed by the counter to place the syrup and mugs, he ‘accidentally’ knocked Zoro upside the head with one of the mugs. Zoro grunted and opened one angry, sleepy eye.

“You know, I forgot to ask,” Sanji said. “Which are you, vigilante or villain?”

Zoro yawned, then sat up. He looked at Sanji like he found the question surprising. “Neither. Or both, I suppose. We mostly follow Luffy’s lead, and he’s all about being free, enjoying life and doing what we want.”

_Sure sounds like_ _‘villain_ _’_ , Sanji thought. He turned back to the stove and scraped the eggs that had finished into a plate before turning back to Zoro, his curiosity rising. “I wouldn’t have thought someone like you would follow anyone’s lead,” he said.

“Someone like me?” Zoro repeated, and went still in a way that instantly registered to Sanji as hostile.

“A Moon Colosseum winner,” Sanji explained carefully. Zoro relaxed.

“I go there mostly for the money,” he said. “You don’t strike me as a spectator, have you fought there before?”

It was Sanji’s turn to tense.

“Not there,” he said vaguely. “I just like to listen to the gossip on fighters.”

Zoro gave him a look that said he noticed the evasion, but wasn’t going to pursue it. “My fighting and my decision to stay with Luffy are different matters,” he said. “The kid’s crazy, but he’s the kind of crazy I’d be happy to follow into hell, if that’s where he led.”

Sanji didn’t know what to make of that answer. On one hand, that level of devotion from someone independent enough to have gotten involved in the Moon Colloseum on his own spoke to Luffy’s good leadership, on the other hand it seemed like _too_ deep a conviction, which said more about Zoro than it did Luffy.

“What are you boys doing so early in the morning?” The sleepy voice revealed a Nami dressed in a simple thigh-length dress and sandals just come down the stairs into the living area. She moved to sit next to Zoro at the counter.

 “Miss Nami!” he called out, smiling as he picked up one of the kitchen’s mismatched plates and started arranging food onto it. He avoided looking into her eyes, not wanting to see what he had yesterday while his defenses were down, but even so he could tell there was something wrong—she wore makeup to hide the effects of a sleepless night, and she was trying too hard to look casual.

_I don_ _’t know her,_ he reminded himself. _Stop making assumptions_. He placed the plate in front of her, smile still in place. “You look as lovely in the morning as you did during the night,” not his best line, perhaps, but then again he wasn’t sure he really wanted to charm Nami. She was beautiful, no doubt, but he’d already learned the hard way that it wasn’t a good idea to become involved with a good actress.

Her smile became a little more real as she took the plate and sat down. Sanji felt satisfied as he filled another plate for Zoro. If the compliment lifted the poor woman’s spirit a little, then it was worth it. Just because he didn’t think he wanted anything long-lasting with her didn’t mean he wanted her to be sad. He hoped that she managed to deal with whatever it was that brought darkness to her eyes, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was. He had a feeling if he did, he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from interfering.

“Wah! Something smells good!” Luffy cried out from above, and jumped down the railing into the common room, literally drooling as he looked to the kitchen. Sanji was barely able to react in time and kick the hand that stretched from the boy’s arm and reached for Zoro’s plate.

“You’ll have some too,” he scolded, giving Zoro his plate. “Just wait your turn, you impatient brat.”

Luffy pouted, but moved to sit at the counter next to Nami. The counter was long enough to fit three people on each side, so Usopp and Sanji would have to sit on the kitchen side to fit. Sanji served two plates, one for Luffy and another for Usopp, just as the man with the broken nose climbed down from his room and sunk into a chair, looking barely awake.

“Whose idea was it to eat this early?” He complained, his voice nasal from the blocked nostrils.

“I was just making myself food before you lot showed up,” Sanji served the plates, then went back to get one for himself. It was a blatant lie, obvious from the amount of food he’d made, which seemed like too little given Luffy’s mournful looks around the table. If he ever cooked for them again, he would have to remember to correct for Luffy’s appetite.

_Why am I making plans for cooking for these people?_ Sanji caught himself. He was fine staying with them for a little while, maybe a day or two while he figured out what to do longer term, but there was no way he would join Luffy’s ‘crew’. Not when they were strangers, not when he had no idea what they were capable of. He had a hard enough time living with _Zeff_ , and the man had practically raised him.

But there was something different, too, in the group dynamics they shared. He could feel some part of him relax as he watched them happily arguing as they ate breakfast, Nami’s darkness ebbing as she settled into her role in the team. Sanji couldn’t remember the last time he had enjoyed a meal quite like that, simply relaxed and having fun and enjoying being alive. _Back with Jo and Ben, maybe?_

“How would you do it?” He couldn’t help asking Luffy as he took a seat at the counter. Everyone looked at him, confused. “Save the world,” he clarified.

Luffy’s grin was wide and infectious. He spread out one hand in front of him and held up three fingers. “Three steps,” he said. The others at the table looked over at him in surprise, and Sanji wondered if any of them had bothered to ask that question before. “I gather a good crew that can do everything I can’t,” Luffy pulled one finger down. “We go to Grand City, because that’s where changes happen,” another finger. “I save the world.”

One would think, given Luffy’s proud smile, that he’d just explained an expert plan instead of a list of general objectives.

“That’s… better than I was expecting,” Nami said. Zoro and Usopp nodded. _How low is their opinion of Luffy for that to have been good?_ Sanji chocked back a laugh. It wasn’t like he disliked people who had big dreams. After all, fools had to stick together.

 ~.~.~.~.~

Nami left just after breakfast, saying simply that she had ‘business’ and they shouldn’t expect her back early. Usopp and Luffy took her at her word, while Sanji and Zoro were a bit more skeptical, if for different reasons. Zoro seemed to think she was going to go robbing someone and should take him or Luffy along as security, while Sanji thought he saw a haunted look in her eyes as she left, and had a bad feeling about what she might be planning.

Left to themselves, Luffy and Usopp settled into the couch and turned on the tv while Zoro went into the weights room to train. Sanji cleaned the kitchen area, thinking. He had enjoyed the time he spent with these idiots more than he thought he would, but joining a criminal super’s group would defeat the purpose of keeping a low profile. Then again, with Sanji’s temper and impatience, he was bound to get in trouble on his own sooner rather than later.

He tried to figure out how he would feel about becoming a criminal super. Zeff had been one, back when they first met, and Sanji had loathed him back then. He didn’t mind vigilantes as much as villains, but those wound up dead far more often than any other group, as they were hunted by both Superheroes _and_ villains. He tried to imagine himself in a costume and mask, and felt ridiculous. 

Even if he did decide to become a superidiot, there was no reason to stick with Luffy and his gang. There would be no ‘temporary’ if he did so. He had a feeling that, once Luffy decided he was one of them, there would be nothing he could do to convince him otherwise.

“Oi! Sanji, can you make a snack?” Luffy yelled from the couch, and Usopp shoved him in the ribs and scolded him for having just finished breakfast. Sanji frowned; he might already be too late on that last count.

“Your pantry’s almost empty,” Sanji said, walking over to the main room and sitting on the empty armchair. The television was old and small, and its image was wavering and filled with static. They were watching some children’s animated show about Superheroes.

Sanji lit a cigarette and settled in to watch, though in the end he spent more time laughing as Luffy and Usopp argued, then wrestled, over finer points of the show. He’d never had much time for television; Zeff hadn’t liked it and as long as he’d lived with the old man, it was under his rules. He had fun watching Luffy use his stretching power to imitate the fictional Hero’s spider powers, swinging from the upper level’s rafters.

Within the hour he’d been pulled into the boys’ nonsensical discussion, defending the main character’s decision to keep his secret identity from his family against Luffy and Usopp’s arguments. Two hours later he was wondering what magic he might pull from the few ingredients left for lunch, when Zoro’s loud cursing made all of them look to the training room. An angry, sweaty, bare-chested Zoro stormed into the room, one of his swords—still in its sheath—in his hand.

“Who the hell touched my fucking sword?” He snarled. Sanji stared at the impressive scar that went across the swordsman’s chest from shoulder to hip, its contours still clear—it couldn’t be more than a couple of months old. He tried to imagine the wound as it would have been at the time, opening the man up, blood everywhere—he was lucky to have survived it, and only his devil-fruit heritage would have let him heal.

“Was it you?” Distracted by the scar, Sanji didn’t notice Zoro talking to him, or getting close enough to grab the lapels of his coat and pull him forward.

“Don’t touch me,” Sanji snarled back, something cold and dark coiling in his chest at the real threat the man was emanating. This wasn’t the calm but wary Zoro of the night before. He was one wrong word away from seriously attacking Sanji.

“Zoro!” Luffy stepped in between the two of them, breaking some of the tension. Zoro let go of Sanji and the two separated.

“What happened?” Usopp was trying to sound calm and in control, but Sanji saw his knees trembling. Zoro thrust his sword forward, like that meant anything.

“ _Someone_ switched out Wado’s sheath with a cheap fake!” Sanji leaned away from the thrust forward sword and showed his empty hands.

“What would I do with some crappy sword’s sheath?”

“It’s not a _crappy sword_ ,” Zoro swung the sheathed blade at Sanji’s head, forcing him to duck. “It’s a fucking relic,” another swing, and this time Sanji intercepted it with his foot, pushing the swing back down. Zoro kept the strength behind his sword, causing them to be pushing against each other. “even its sheath alone is worth-“ he paused, surprise and realization flashing across his face, his grip weakening enough for Sanji to push down and send the sword back to Zoro’s side.

“If I were going to steal something, I sure as hell wouldn’t stick around afterward!” Sanji spat. Like he would ever _touch_ that fucking sword. It had been hard enough to start using knives again to cook, after everything, but just the thought of touching something made to kill, used to spill blood… it twisted Sanji’s insides into knots.

“Z-Zoro,” Usopp stepped forward, still trembling but looking determined. “You keep those swords on you all the time. When would Sanji have had a chance to get them without you noticing?”

“He wouldn’t.” Zoro’s tone had become flat and emotionless. He looked at the sword in his hand.

“Then we just have to think about who-“

“Nami.” He looked up, met Luffy’s eyes. “Nami came to me last night asking for advice about weapons. I let her take a look at my swords.”

“Nami wouldn’t steal from us.” Luffy’s words were absolute. There was a tension between those two that was making the hairs on the back of Sanji’s neck stand up. He moved next to Usopp and pulled him back just to be safe.

“She’s a thief,” something—cold, bitter anger—was stealing into the swordsman’s tone. “And she always said she wasn’t one of us.”

“She’s our friend,” Luffy countered. “She might keep more than her share of the loot, and trick us into borrowing money from her at crazy prices, but she wouldn’t do anything that hurt us!”

Sanji didn’t think that was strictly true. He remembered the way she’d looked last night, desperately trying to protect Usopp and Luffy, then tenderly caring for her friend’s injuries. He thought of her this morning, sad and trying to hide it—desperate, but unwilling or unable to explain. He didn’t think it was a lie that she cared for them, but he understood how an outside influence could turn even the most precious, wholesome connections into nothing but pain.

“She’s been playing us from the start! I wouldn’t be surprised if she took everything remotely valuable from the place!” Sanji felt his temper rising at Zoro’s words. The man was awfully quick to jump to the worst conclusion about his supposed friend.

“She wouldn’t-“ he stopped, and turned suddenly to look at Usopp. “Hey, you have that finding thingie, right?”

Usopp looked lost for a moment before he figured out what Luffy was saying. A smile formed on his bruised face as he nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah! I set up a tracker on all of our phones in case any of us got in trouble last week. Nami’s, too.”

Luffy turned back to Zoro. “So we’ll go and find her, and ask her, and she’ll explain everything and we’ll go back to normal.” Despite his words being like those of an unreasonable five-year-old, his voice was hard and unyielding, and he stared down an angry Zoro without a hint of fear.

“I’ll go get my laptop,” Usopp said quickly, turning and running towards the stairs. Zoro stood against Luffy in angry silence for a few more seconds before he gave a slow nod and strapped the sword, fake scabbard and all, into the belt at his waist.

“Hey,” Sanji wasn’t sure it was smart to step into a conflict he had nothing to do with, but he couldn’t help himself, not with the fresh memory of Nami’s haunted look embedded into his brain. “Who was the one that hurt her before?” He almost said ‘broke’, but checked himself in time. The litany of ‘I don’t really know her; this is crazy’ through his thoughts was already starting to get old.

Luffy and Zoro looked at him like they’d forgotten he was there.

“Hurt her?” Luffy said blankly.

“She gets into trouble with supers every over week,” Zoro said, “she likes to steal from them.”

That wasn’t what Sanji had meant at all, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t get a better answer from these two. Did they really not know, or were they keeping her secret? He couldn’t blame them if it was the latter, but he thought it was the former reason.

“Aaaah!” The panicked scream from Usopp’s room made them all turn upward, where the boy was standing at the doorway to his room with a bunch of dismantled computer parts held up in his arms and tears in his eyes. “My computers—all of them, they’re torn apart!”

Zoro looked at Luffy sidelong, not saying a word but making his opinion heard anyway. Luffy’s expression darkened.

“So we’ll just find her another way.” He said, glaring back at Zoro. Sanji was starting to see a pattern, though. He wondered if Luffy would be the next one to find a valuable possession missing or broken.

Zoro sighed and shook his head. “Alright, as you say, you troublesome captain.” There was a world of meaning behind the word that Sanji wasn’t privy to. Why ‘captain’ and not ‘boss’ or ‘leader’?

Usopp had come down, computer parts still in his hands, eyes watery and lost. “Nami… why would Nami do this?” Sanji looked away. He hadn’t known this group long, but he didn’t want to watch it break apart before his eyes. Had it been an illusion, that sense of tight-knit comradery this morning? Usopp shook his head violently, and when he looked up there was anger quickly replacing the grief.

“Luffy, what are we-“ Usopp’s words were cut off by a loud banging on the underground-level door. By everyone’s expressions, Sanji could guess they weren’t expecting anyone, and that someone arriving at their door wasn’t a usual occurrence. Smoker couldn’t have found them this fast, could he?

“Roronoa Zoro! We know you’re here!” The man on the other side of the door yelled in between bangs. “You and your associates are wanted for outstanding debts to the Colosseum! Your place is surrounded, turn yourselves in or be prepared to be riddled with bullets!”

“Debts?” Luffy gave Zoro a confused look, but Sanji barely noticed it. It felt like someone had hollowed out his chest and filled it with jagged spikes of ice. The _Colosseum_ was _here_.

“Mm? Oh, I was supposed to fight some more battles in exchange for an advance or something, but I never found the place again.” Zoro’s completely uninterested, unworried tone helped to bring Sanji back from the brink of panic. _The Moon Colosseum_ , he filled in for himself. _That_ _’s_ what the men outside were here for. Not for Sanji, not for… not for anything else.

“You idiot!” Usopp hit Zoro over the head with the broken bit of computer plastic in his hand. “You borrowed from mobsters and forgot about it!?”

“Open the door, Roronoa Zoro!” The shouting outside was getting more violent, and even the heavy metal door was rattling in its hinges from the strength of the knocks.

“Fuck, I don’t have time to deal with this,” Zoro growled, moving his hand down to his swords.

“H-Hey, they have guns out there, you know, guns!” Usopp stammered, seeing where Zoro was going with his comment. “Maybe we should just let them in and hear them out. I’m sure mobsters get a bad reputation for no reason, there should be a perfectly good compromise-“

“We have to go and get Nami,” Luffy said stubbornly. “I don’t want to deal with them.”

Sanji was completely on Luffy’s side on this one. The less he had to do with anyone in _any_ of the Colosseums (and that included Three-sword _fucking_ Zoro), the better.

“B-but they said the place was surrounded,” Usopp’s voice had gone into an upper register closer to a whimper than anything else.

“I’ll get rid of them,” Zoro gripped his sword and moved towards the door.

“I think this is my cue to leave,” Sanji might be keeping panic at bay, but he was far from calm. He was already regretting spending the night with the group, and wondering if there was a way he could leave without being seen by the Colosseum thugs.

“Scared, curly-brow?” Zoro’s face had become animated again, and the challenging grin he sent Sanji set his temper aflame. Was that gigantic asshole _happy?_

_Of course I_ _’m fucking scared!_ He thought, but would never say. Only the old man would understand _that_ sentiment. “I don’t need to go making any more enemies on your behalf, moss-head!” he snapped.

“Guys…” Usopp looked ready to cry. Luffy looked at the door and cracked his knuckles, looking serious.

“We’ll get rid of them and find Nami,” Luffy said, the first order Sanji had heard from him.

“I’m not one of you!” Sanji argued. They all ignored him.

“Let’s go!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thanks for reading, and extra thanks for leaving a review! (you have no idea how productive I get right after I get one; this one helped me fix up the first half of the chapter n.n). On a tangent, I'm having way too much fun with the weird relationship that Sanji and Zeff have, heh. 
> 
> Like I said last chapter, I ran out of buffer chapters so I'll start posting them once a week, on Wednesdays. And of course I had to change the timing right after my first cliffhanger... ehem, but hey, at least the plot is moving forward. 
> 
> Next time, Zoro fights. A lot. And thinks, a little.


	6. New Challenges and Old Friends

In Zoro’s opinion, there was nothing better for releasing pent-up anger than fast, unthinking violence. It was especially good if he got to hurt people who had threatened his home, and who were undoubtedly not innocent in any meaning of the word. He made sure not to lose himself too far—he knew Luffy’s boundaries where violence was concerned, and his friend wouldn’t be happy to hear he’d killed anyone, much less people that much weaker than himself.

Even so, the dance with his three swords took him through countless mob-hired henchmen, his blades flicking _just so_ to snip a wrist tendon on the arm of a man trying to shoot him, then the back of the legs of the one trying to get behind him, and shallow cuts all over anyone too stupid not to run when Zoro attacked.

Luffy worked his own brand of violence against the thugs, his body parts stretching and flying all over the place, sweeping entire groups into walls or against the ground, punching others so hard that bones broke and teeth flew. There had been more than twenty people waiting for them outside the underground exit, but within minutes their numbers were down to three, with a few more reinforcements rushing over from their stations around the building.

Zoro cut down one of the last remaining thugs just as one of the newcomers panicked and emptied his handgun at Luffy. The bullets sunk into his skin, then rebounded and embedded themselves into the shooter and the poor unfortunates standing near him. Zoro jumped over one of the fallen bodies to reach a crouching woman aiming a rifle at the building doorway, where Usopp still stood, looking lost. _Idiot,_ Zoro thought angrily. Usopp wasn’t a straight-forward fighter—he should be finding a place where he could do damage while protecting himself, not trying to gather the courage to enter the melee.

More surprisingly, the cook was next to him. Zoro cut the riflewoman’s fingers from her grip on her weapon, then used the flat side of another blade to knock her senseless. When he looked back up, curly-brow had apparently convinced Usopp to move, and was now covering as they ran across the street to a better vantage point.

Zoro hadn’t known the cook for very long, but already he felt like he understood several things about who he was: an idiot around women, proud, quick to anger but just as quick to forget, and most importantly, a fighter. He didn’t hesitate to step around bodies or kick anyone who tried to grab him or Usopp, but he walked with his head down and his hair falling into all of his face and not just half of it, like he was trying to obscure it from view.

He wasn’t scared to fight, clearly. Was he trying to keep from being identified? Could he be in trouble with Joker, like Zoro?

“There!” Luffy stood next to a pile of groaning bodies and crossed his arms. Zoro walked over to him.

“I’m a little insulted that they thought they could take me in with just this…” He said, glancing around at all the wounded weaklings. Sure, they’d come armed with an assortment of firearms, but no experienced devil-born was afraid of regular guns. Regular people weren’t aware of just how hard it was to kill someone immediately with bullets, and where devil-born were concerned, what didn’t kill you was just a reason to get pissed off and go on a rampage. Zoro felt some aches from stray bullets that had tagged him in the shoulder and calf, but they were nothing serious. The single strike from Smoker last night had done far more damage.

“ _That_ is what we would call a test,” said a new voice. From behind another building’s wall stepped out an unscathed blonde man in a pink tank top with a long blue coat slung loosely over his shoulders. He was tall and muscular, with blue tattoos of lines and circles etched into his bare arms, a thin scar over his right eye and an aggressively intense look in his dark eyes that Zoro associated with people that had nothing worth living for. He was grinning smugly and clapping for them. “If you lot were brought down by just that, then there would be no point in giving you a second chance.”

Zoro already disliked the man, despite having met him only seconds before. He put away the swords in his mouth and left hand, then wiped his face clean on his sleeve. He knew what he looked like just after a battle—blood splattered on his face and hands, face cold and eyes dark beneath the dark bandana he wore to keep his hair out of his eyes when he fought. It was usually enough to intimidate anyone who survived the first round of attacks.  

To the man’s credit, he didn’t react to being looked at like a bug by a swordsman splattered with the blood of a dozen people. He moved walked towards Zoro with a relaxed stance, licking his lips in hungry anticipation. A thrill ran up Zoro’s spine. He might not look particularly strange, but he was suddenly certain that the new arrival was, at the very least, devil-born.

“Who are you?” Luffy asked, stepping close to Zoro, frowning. “What do you want? We have things to do.”

“The name’s Bellamy,” the man said, still walking towards them. “But most people just know me as the Hyena. I’m an enforcer for Joker.”

From the corner of his eye, Zoro saw Sanji lean further away from them, turning his face away. _Hah, so he_ is _hiding from them_.

“We don’t have time to play with you, small fry,” Zoro said. The man gave a sudden laugh, loud and nasty.

“You are just so full of yourselves, aren’t ya? You win a few fights here and there, and you think yourself the world’s strongest?” He laughed again. Rather than be incensed, however, Zoro felt himself grow cold. There was something… wrong with this man. Going by the way Luffy wasn’t just saying whatever was on his mind, his friend had also noticed.

“It was a nice show you put on, I’ll admit,” Bellamy said, turning and giving a savage kick to one of the downed gunmen. “Even if this trash didn’t-” he kicked again “-do-” again “-what they were supposed to!” His next kick turned into a backwards jump as Luffy threw a punch at him.

“What the hell are you doing to your friends!” Luffy shouted, pulling back his arm with a snap.

“Friends?” Bellamy laughed again. “They’re just tools I borrowed for this job. I honestly expected far more of them to die after facing the dreaded Demon Slasher.” The cold thing inside Zoro grew edges. He hadn’t heard that nickname since… his vision dimmed, and sounds became distorted. There were red eyes and a black sword. And pain, so much pain, but worse still the shame that burned worse than fire, the wish to be dead rather than himself, hopeless, helpless…

Zoro pulled himself back together with an effort. He didn’t let himself think of the past very often, not since Luffy had saved him and he’d decided to become something better, someone who wasn’t alone and could live like a person and not an animal. He’d buried the Demon Slasher for good four months ago, and hadn’t looked back since.

The Hyena was still talking. “Really, they were supposed to test _all four_ of you, but instead they got taken out by just you two. Joker won’t be happy about this.” He slipped a hand behind his back and brought out a long curved knife, which he brought close to his face to lick. He crouched down on one knee, eyes fixed on them. Luffy and Zoro both prepared to defend, but they weren’t prepared for Bellamy’s front leg to twist and turn into a spring, which coiled and sprung as he moved his weight forward, sending him flying backwards, straight at—

“Usopp! Sanji!” Luffy yelled, throwing out a punch that wouldn’t reach them in time—

Sanji bent forward toward the attack, planting both hands on the ground and twisting his legs off the ground to land a two quick, powerful kicks just as Bellamy reached them, one to the outstretched arm with the knife and the second to his face, sending the fruit-user crashing through a wall and into one of the abandoned factories that littered the street. In a move as smooth as a gymnast’s the cook landed back on his feet and straightened. _Some kick, indeed_ , Zoro thought, impressed. He thought he understood Luffy’s earlier excitement a little better.

Usopp didn’t hesitate either. Despite trembling all over, he dug into the pockets of his overalls to get one his ‘emergency distractions’ and threw the small canister inside the hole in the wall. Instantly a bronze cloud expanded outwards, filling the room inside. Usopp then turned and grabbed Sanji’s shoulders, pushing him.

“Luffy, Zoro, let’s go!” He yelled. “My pepper bomb won’t hold him long.”

Neither Luffy nor Zoro moved. They were both staring into the wall, waiting for the Hyena to resurface. _He_ _’s too dangerous to leave behind_ , Zoro thought, already getting his other swords ready. He knew how to deal with threats, and how to make sure they were never an issue again-

It wasn’t until he saw the dead, mutilated body of Bellamy in his mind that Zoro realized what he was doing. He froze, heart pounding. He was supposed to be _over_ that. He was better, he hadn’t even _thought_ about that stuff since he’d joined with Luffy.

“Guys, finding Nami’s the priority, remember!” Usopp had reached them, still pushing Sanji ahead of him. The cook was looking towards the building with a distracted frown, but he was allowing Usopp to lead him away.

“Yes… Yes. We have to find Nami!” Luffy tore himself away from the broken wall and pulled Zoro along with him. Zoro followed along, comforted a little that it didn’t appear that any of his friends had noticed him freeze. For once, he was glad to have an excuse not to fight. With the way his mind was misfiring, he didn’t want to chance a mistake, or a backslide.

They hurried down the street that would get them to the subway entrance the quickest. Two blocks away Zoro heard something smash against the underground’s high ceiling just behind them and reacted without thought, grabbing onto the back of Usopp’s overalls and pulling him back just in time to save him from getting squashed by the Hyena’s sudden fall from above. Bits of concrete and dust floated from the cracked paving stones where Bellamy bounced just after he landed, both legs turned to springs, and he turned in the air so he’d be facing them and blocking their way when he skidded to a stop.

“Ah ah ah,” The blonde man was covered in dust, his blue coat torn in several places and barely clinging to him. His eyes were red and watery, his nose runny, both effects of Usopp’s bomb. The weapon was a clever one, really. It was something that affected the senses without doing much direct damage, which made it just as effective, if not more, against supers than more traditional weaponry. Still, it didn’t seem to bother _this_ super much. His mostly insane grin was still in place, despite the blood running down his hairline from the cook’s kick. “I wasn’t-” he paused to cough and hack some building dust from his lungs. Zoro turned his head to see Luffy gearing up for the fight and Sanji try to hide his face beneath his hair again. “- done with you.”

Zoro cursed his luck. The _one_ time he didn’t want a fight… maybe he could let Luffy take the lead. Someone had to keep an eye on Usopp to make sure he didn’t die, and it would free him to keep a better eye on curly-brows and his suspicious behavior.

“We don’t have time to deal with you!” Luffy yelled, throwing both of his arms back and running at Bellamy. Bellamy crouched again and jumped just in time to dodge Luffy’s ‘bazooka’ attack, landing next to Luffy and turning his right arm into a spring just before he punched Luffy in the chest, sending him crashing into another building. Abandoned underground district or not, if they kept fighting this way they would attract too much attention.

Zoro’s swords were in his mouth and hands before he had a chance to think. _Dammit,_ he cursed silently. If it was between leaving his friends unprotected and risking a return to old behavior, he knew what he would pick every time. It wasn’t like Luffy couldn’t help him put himself back together a second time, if the worst happened.

Luffy wasn’t weak enough to get taken down with one hit, though (at least, he hadn’t ever been before Smoker), and in no time Zoro saw his arms stretch from the wreckage, grab on to the lip of the broken wall and launch himself out like a rocket at Bellamy. The Hyena barely deflected it with both arms in front of his chest as springs that bounced Luffy back, though it also sent him flying in the opposite direction.

He and Luffy stood back up at about the same time, but just as Luffy was getting ready for his next attack Bellamy raised his hand. “Wait!” He coughed again, hand still in the air. Luffy paused, looking confused but ready to keep going. “I’ve seen enough, kids,” He tried to grin again, but the expression looked off this time. Had Luffy managed to make this lunatic take him seriously?

Bellamy straightened, his body becoming regular once more, and he slipped his coat from his shoulders so he had it sprawled over one arm. With the other he dug into its pockets and pulled out what looked like sealed envelopes, dirty and bent out of shape from the fighting. He fanned them out with his hand, showing that there were four, and offered them to Luffy.

“What’s that?” Zoro asked.

“Invitations.” Bellamy replied, waving the envelopes at them. “A chance to clear your debt _and_ make some money. Maybe get some notoriety if that’s what you’re after.”

“There’s four of those,” it was the first Zoro had heard from Sanji since they’d left their building. “but I’m not actually one of them,” he said, taking a small step away from their group, glancing to Luffy and back to Bellamy. “Hell, I only met them yesterday.”

Zoro frowned at that, too. The cook had a point. Unless… “Is one of those meant for Nami?” He asked. The name tasted bitter on his tongue, for far too many reasons he didn’t want to think about at the moment.

Bellamy shrugged. “I was told there would be four men at this address. I don’t really give a damn who you are. Now take the fucking invitations, before I come to the wrong conclusion and think you’re refusing Joker’s generous offer.”

Zoro could guess what was in these ‘invitations’. A day, time and place, and maybe rules. A colosseum battle arranged in advance, designed to be a special spectacle. Zoro didn’t exactly mind going to fight there, but Luffy and Usopp had never participated in that kind of fight before, and he had a feeling, given the way the four of them had been lumped together, that this would be one of the Moon Colosseum’s infamous group matches.

“I don’t get it.” Luffy said bluntly, relaxing his fighting stance and picking at his nose. Zoro felt a surge of affection and exasperation towards his friend.

“They want us to fight in the Colosseum,” Zoro explained.

“But we have to find Nami!” Luffy said.

“The invitation is set for a month from now,” Bellamy said. “Let’s play again someday, straw hat.” He tried to grin, but instead started coughing again. Zoro watched him warily. The man had gone from bloodthirsty psychopath to bored bystander in moments, and he didn’t trust the change.

“Mmm,” Luffy walked forward and took all the letters from Bellamy’s hand, watching him just as carefully as Zoro.

“Hey!” Sanji took half a step forward. “Don’t accept on my behalf, idiot!”

“It’s all of you or nothing, kid.” Bellamy gave Sanji a cold, hard stare. “Besides, I don’t know what you’re so afraid of. Those kicks of yours will probably keep you alive. A little while, at least. If I’m not your opponent.” For a moment the old Hyena was back, his eyes flashing, and he licked his lips. Then he shook his head and spread his hands.

“See you in a month, one way or another,” Bellamy snickered, then reached into his coat pocket again to pull out a mask, an intricate thing that covered half his face with spotted fur like his namesake animal. “Just remember, if you don’t show, your lives are forfeit! We won’t mess around with cannon fodder this time.” His legs turned to springs again as he jumped away, going down a distant alley without so much as a glance back.

“Is it over?” Usopp asked, looking around from behind Zoro.

“Hey, these have our names on them,” Luffy looked up from the envelopes he held. “‘Rubber strawhat guy’, ‘three-sword Zoro’, ‘long-nose normal’, and ‘curly eyebrow cook’.”

Sanji let out a long, impressive string of curse words. He walked up to Luffy and snatched the envelope meant for him. “How did they even know about me?” He muttered, tearing the envelope open and pulling out the letter inside.

“Anyone near the restaurant could have seen you running out with us,” Usopp suggested.

“But they wouldn’t have found our building that fast,” Zoro argued. “And they would have included one more letter…”

“…for Nami.” Usopp finished for him. “Damn it! That bitch gave us up to freaking mobsters!”

“Fuck!” Zoro slammed his swords into their sheaths, feeling his anger spike when Wado rattled in its fake one. “It wasn’t enough to steal from us and break our things?”

Luffy stuffed the three remaining envelopes into his pocket. “We don’t know that it was Nami,” he said stubbornly.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense!” When he wanted to, Usopp could be just as stubborn as Luffy.

“We are finding Nami.” Luffy crossed his arms and glared at Usopp.

“Why, so she can find another way to betray us?”

“Nami is our friend!” Luffy shouted.

“What kind of friend tells mobsters after your blood where you live?”

“But they weren’t.” Sanji’s interruption broke some of the building tension. He was still standing aside, tucking the letter away into his suit’s pocket and taking out a cigarette, which he didn’t hesitate to put into his mouth and light.

“What?” Usopp asked.

“Joker’s people, I mean.” He relaxed visible with the first deep inhale of smoke. He held it in for a second before exhaling. “They didn’t _really_ want you—us, I guess—dead.”

“Right,” Usopp gestured around him and continued sarcastically. “I guess all the guns and attacks were just a friendly show of comradery?”

“You heard the super,” Sanji shrugged. “A test. Joker is nothing if not a showman; he wouldn’t get rid of potential entertainment for no reason.”

“You sound like you know him personally,” Zoro noted. A brief grimace crossed Sanji’s face.

“Sometimes it feels like I do,” was all he said. “But that’s not the important bit. All I mean is, if Nami truly wanted to screw you over, she would have called the Heroes down on your base, not the mobsters who would give you a chance to fight and stay free.”

That… made some amount of sense. Zoro’s anger at Nami’s betrayal battled against the hope that the cook’s words, along with Luffy’s unshakeable confidence, brought. Maybe Nami wasn’t… maybe she hadn’t…

His hand brushed Wado’s hilt, and remembered that she _had_ betrayed him, even if she hadn’t the guts to get them all thrown in jail.

“Just because she didn’t call the police doesn’t mean she didn’t try to kill us,” Usopp echoed Zoro’s thoughts. “She’s just as much of a criminal as us, she probably didn’t want to draw any attention to herself.”

“I would think you’d be the last to speak in her defense, seeing as you met her only yesterday and she’s already sold you out to a mobster.” Zoro said.

“Ah, but it’s not like I’ll ever believe a beautiful woman like miss Nami could be so heartless as to throw her friends away for no reason!” His lips twisted into a wistful smile and he got a far-away look in his eyes, like he was fantasizing about declaring his faith to an imaginary Nami. _Geh, an idiot about women, indeed._

Luffy was nodding along, probably just happy to have someone on his side rather than actually following either of Sanji’s arguments.

“So you forgive her for volunteering you for a Colosseum battle?” Zoro pressed. The cook’s visible eye found him and narrowed. _Yes, I noticed_ , Zoro thought, but kept his face impassive.

“You could say it was my fault for sticking around,” he shrugged. The move was calculated to look casual, and Zoro could see through it. He was still bothered by the Hyena’s attack.

“Like I said,” Luffy interrupted, “we just have to find Nami, and everything will make sense.”

_You never said that_ , Zoro thought, though he could believe that his rather naïve friend really believed that. His own opinion, and he guessed Usopp would side with him on this, was that finding Nami would only complicate things, and make her betrayal burn that much worse. She had given up their _home_.

Still, he trusted Luffy. Even if it was a mistake, he would do what Luffy asked. Maybe _because_ it was a mistake. Nothing ever really made sense where Luffy was concerned, and yet so far he hadn’t regretted a single thing he’d done beside his crazy friend.

“This is crazy.” Usopp threw up his hands. “She already set us up with freaking _Joker_. What do you think she’ll do if we try and find her? Am I the only one worried about this?”

“It would have to be someone pretty scary, to corner someone like miss Nami in this way.” Sanji said.

“You think she was forced to steal my sword’s hilt, break his computers, and try to get us killed?” Zoro asked in disbelief, wondering just how far Sanji’s delusions went. Was he the type who would continue to believe in a pretty woman’s innocence even as she beat him to death?

“What?” Luffy looked angry. “Someone’s hurting Nami?”

“Hey, hey!” Usopp waved his hands in between Luffy and Sanji. “I still think this is stupid, but knowing Luffy we might as well get it done with. We can figure out if she had a reason for what she did when we talk with her,” there was a mix in his tone between hope and disbelief that matched closely what Zoro felt, “and seeing as she broke all my equipment, do we have any idea how to find her?”

“Couldn’t we just steal a new computer for you?” Luffy asked. Sanji turned away and rubbed his eyes, muttering something about _superidiots_ and _laying low_.

Usopp didn’t look optimistic. “All the right software for tracking Nami is in my computers, not that she would have left it on anyway. She probably switched to a new phone this morning.”

“But you could find her like you found Sanji right?” Luffy looked like he believed Usopp could move a mountain with a finger, as he’d once boasted. Usopp shuffled his feet and tried to grin confidently.

“W-well, it wouldn’t exactly be the same—I mean, given enough time, sure! But Nami’s very careful, and she won’t be caught in some arbitrary news segment-”

“Fuck,” Sanji looked at Usopp, his single visible eyebrow raised. “That’s how you found me? I’m going to kill those shitty reporters from ECT!”

“I think,” Zoro cut in before they got sidetracked, _again_ , “that what Usopp is saying is that even with a new computer he couldn’t find Nami, and that we need a different idea.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re all just assuming I’ll go along with whatever you do?” Sanji muttered. Zoro rolled his eyes. If he wanted to be gone so badly, none of them was stopping him. Well, alright, Luffy probably _would_ try to stop him, but he hadn’t made a move to leave yet.

Luffy also ignored Sanji, deep in thought. “Ah! I just got a good idea!” Luffy grinned and exchanged a glance with Zoro. “We can ask Coby!”

“Coby?” Zoro repeated dumbly. “That… could work. Set a thief to catch a thief.” He nodded, impressed with Luffy’s reasoning.

“Coby’s not a thief anymore,” Luffy laughed.

 *-*-*-*-*-*

Coby’s dorm room was inside the Eastern University Campus, an old building repurposed into first-year’s quarters. Zoro and Luffy had helped Coby move in three months ago, back before they’d started to get any kind of reputation (though Luffy yelled he was a supervillain who was going to save the world back then too, especially when he got drunk). They had inadvertently helped Coby get scouted into the university’s naval ROTC program, despite being only 16 and not having finished high school. Coby had hinted that it was a cover for Hero training, but seeing as Coby was about as normal a human as there could be, Zoro doubted it.

Usopp couldn’t relax on their way over. He kept muttering about masks and them being wanted men after last night, and how they shouldn’t just be walking around in the city proper during the day. Zoro thought he was exaggerating. East City was gigantic, and it had enough devil-born that not even Zoro’s hair and swords stood out significantly, especially near the college. For reasons he didn’t think he’d ever understand, college students loved to dye their hair and get cosmetic pieces to make it look like they were devil-born. In just the last street he’d passed two blue-haired individuals with hair styles that could compete with Buggy’s, a girl with pink striped black hair and purple freckles, and a man with a long, square nose and oddly large eyes in a baseball cap.

“Where are you going?!” Usopp screeched for maybe the third time in the last ten minutes as he pulled on Zoro’s arm and pulled him away from the alley he’d been about to go down. “Literally, all you have to do is stay with the group!”

“Shut up!” Zoro could have sworn they needed to go down one alley to get to Coby’s dorm. That one had been right there. Maybe Luffy was the one that didn’t remember how to get there. He didn’t _always_ get lost. He’d managed to have a life before Usopp had assigned himself as his nanny.

… alright, so he’d had Jonny before to keep him from wandering off, but that was hardly the same thing.

Luffy’s cellphone rang out with a cheesy superhero show theme, and they all paused to let him answer it.

“Hello? Coby?” He’d sent the kid a text earlier warning him that they would be stopping by and needed his help, but they hadn’t gotten a reply until now.

“Luffy?” Coby’s panicking voice was so loud that Zoro could hear his voice on the other end of the line. “What are you doing? I told you I was training to be a—well, you know what—and you’re a criminal! You can’t just walk in here! You can’t, you can’t!”

“Heh, he hasn’t changed at all,” Zoro shared a grin with Luffy.

“I need your help,” Luffy said. “It’s really important.”

“Ah… but- you can’t-” the wordless sound of frustration brought back fond memories of the overwhelmed small-time thief trying to keep up with Luffy’s endless energy back when they’d met. “Fine. Fine, I’ll help, but you can’t come here. I’ll meet you in front of the Sengoku Memorial Library in fifteen minutes. Just—please don’t get close to the navy buildings, Luffy.”

“Thanks!” Luffy replied, promising nothing. He hung up the phone. “Anyone know where the Senoku Library is?”

Usopp drew out his phone and played with it for a few seconds. “It’s not too far from here,” he said, and started off deeper into the university campus.

“You know, I really don’t get to this part of the city often enough…” in a move that had surprised no one, Sanji had tagged along with them to the meeting. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth as a concession to the university’s ‘smoke-free’ policy, and was ogling every scantily-clad woman that walked by. Really—it was getting close to winter, weren’t they cold?

“It’s patrolled at least three times as much as an average East City neighborhood,” Usopp repeated his complaint for the fourth time. “There are more Heroes assigned here than even in Loguetown!”

“I wasn’t technically a criminal before yesterday,” Sanji said. He paused. “Well, not a wanted criminal, anyway.”

“I still don’t see how this friend of yours will help us find Nami,” Usopp sighed. “He’s not a thief anymore, right? So he won’t have any contacts to track her down.”

“You’ll see,” was all Luffy would say on the matter. Zoro thought that Luffy likely believed Coby to be training to be a Superhero, and would have government resources at hand. Even if that wasn’t true (again, Coby was nowhere near exceptional enough to be recruited for _that_ ), he _was_ part of the navy, and the navy had a strange link together to the police through the Heroes that were technically members of both, so he might have access to police records that they couldn’t get with Usopp cut off from his computers.

The Sengoku Memorial Library was a newer building with an entrance that faced an open air plaza filled with college students. They all found an empty bit of shade by a large tree and sat down in the grass under its shade. Well, Luffy and Zoro sat. Usopp looked around nervously and paced, and Sanji leaned against the tree and leered at more women.

Luffy was the first to spot Coby, jumping to his feet and waving excitedly. Zoro barely saw Coby’s pink head of hair among the taller college students moving around the plaza. The kid looked just as he remembered him, though maybe a bit taller, and just as nervous, stumbling and apologizing as he made his way to them.

“ _That_ _’s_ our best hope of finding Nami?” Usopp asked. Coby was small, looked younger than he was, had large round glasses that had a habit of slipping down his nose and always looked overwhelmed. He wasn’t a super, despite the pink hair ( _that_ had thrown Zoro for a loop when they had first met, though he supposed he still didn’t know if it was his natural color).

“Look who’s talking,” Sanji said, earning him a quick glare.

When Coby reached them a minute later, he was red-faced and adjusting his glasses. From this distance, Zoro was surprised to note he had some muscle definition in his arms. The kid hadn’t spent the last three months idling.

“Luffy,” Coby’s face split into a smile. “Mr. Zoro,” he still looked a little scared of him, but there was respect and affection there too. At least this time he didn’t run away screaming like when they had first met.

“Guys, this is Coby,” Luffy put his hand on Coby’s shoulder and pushed him closer to Usopp and Sanji. “He’s training to be-”

Coby turned and nearly toppled Luffy to the ground in his hurry to cover his mouth. “Luffy!” he hissed. “You can’t just go around telling people! I told you, it’s secret!” his voice was barely louder than a whisper, but Zoro didn’t doubt that both Usopp and Sanji heard every word.

“Coby’s training to be a naval officer,” Zoro said.

“The navy, really?” Usopp looked Coby up and down, sounding dubious. Coby blushed, but met Usopp’s look and lifted his chin with a challenge.

“Yes, the Navy.”

“Huh,” Sanji pushed himself away from the tree to get a better look at Coby. “I’ve never met a baby Hero before,” he said. Coby spluttered.

“I-that’s not-I never-you-”

“Pshht,” Usopp snorted. “There is no way he’s a Hero.” It was beginning to worry Zoro just how often he was agreeing with Usopp that day.

“Who are you?” Coby demanded of Sanji.

“This is Sanji and this is Usopp,” Luffy said, pointing to each one in turn. “They’re a part of my crew.”

“I am not-! You know what, who the hell cares.” The cook took out a lighter and lit his cigarette. Coby was watching Sanji suspiciously.

“Why would you think that I was… _that_?” he asked.

Sanji tilted his head to the side and blew out a cloud of smoke at Coby. He lifted his free hand and began to count up points on his fingers. “The navy is currently and historically linked to the DSA, never mind that they’re the ones that give Superheroes their legal ranks ‘in case of emergencies’.” He ticked off one finger. “You’re a super.” Another. “Young as you are, you must have been scouted or you wouldn’t have gotten in,” three fingers, “you’re trying very hard to keep a secret that _this_ idiot is smugly proud of,” he used his fourth finger to point at Luffy.

“I-I’m not a super,” Coby stammered. Zoro thought about Sanji’s other points. While it was true that the Heroes had naval ranks once they were all trained and licensed and legal, he’d never thought that it was the _actual_ navy doing the training. No one really knew where Heroes were taught or how, but it seemed like it would be too obvious for it to simply be ‘in naval ROTC disguise’.

“There is no way you painted your hair that color for fun,” Sanji argued. “Someone like you is far more likely to dye it something boring to avoid notice.” It was a fair point, given that back when they had first met him he usually wore a cap to hide his hair, but it annoyed Zoro that Sanji was so comfortable making assumptions about other people.

“Well- no, but…” He looked to Luffy for help, who shrugged.

“He is really weak and has no interest in fighting,” he confirmed.

“I think there was probably a fruit user in my family a long, long time ago,” Coby said with a self-deprecating smile. “So I got the weird hair color but nothing else.”

“That’s not how it works,” Sanji said, frowning in concentration. He started to say something else, then caught himself and shook his head. “Well, never mind that. We’re here for miss Nami, right?” He made a shooing motion at Luffy, like he was telling him to stop wasting time and get to it.

“Nami?” Coby looked around for a moment, confused. “She’s the thief girl you told me about, right? Your friend?” Nami had come along long after Coby had gone his way, but he and Luffy regularly texted each other. Zoro wondered if Coby ever felt bad about continuing a friendship with a villain when he was trying to go legal and law-abiding, but the boy could be stubborn as hell when it came to both loyalty and justice.

“We need your help finding her,” Luffy’s demeanor turned serious. Coby looked around nervously, checking to see there wasn’t anyone close enough to overhear them.

“Is she in trouble?” He said quietly.

“Yes,” said Sanji, just as Zoro made a non-committal sound and Usopp said “no”.

“We just need to find her,” Luffy said.

“And you’re asking me because…” Coby looked confused, then paled. “Y-you can’t want me to go and ask Alvida’s gang… Luffy, I just…”

Luffy looked at him blankly. “That’s the fat super that demanded all of Coby’s earnings,” Zoro reminded him.

“Ah! Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. If I wanted to ask her I would just go and beat her up a little—but I don’t think she would know where Nami is. But I thought, since Nami’s a criminal who keeps getting into fights with supers, then your connections with Superheroes-” Coby’s loud ‘shhh’ and launch at Luffy to shut his mouth this time threw them both to the ground.

“I’m just starting out!” He hissed. “I don’t really have any friends, let alone connections, and-”

“Did he just admit he’s a baby Hero?” Sanji asked Usopp, who nodded dumbly, like he couldn’t understand a world where someone like Coby was scouted into a Superhero training program.

Zoro helped Coby and Luffy back to their feet. “You just thought of something,” he told Coby.

“Huh? Oh, well, I guess, but…” he chewed on his lip. “I mean, it’s impossible, really. Only… no. I shouldn’t…” Coby was only a coward _most_ of the time, but Zoro had seen him do stupidly brave things when he got worked up.

“Coby, please.” Luffy said. “It’s for a friend.”

Coby stared at Luffy quietly for a few seconds, then sighed in defeat. “Fine.” He sat down on the grass and took off his backpack. He reached inside and drew out a small laptop from inside. “We’re given access to some files on criminal supers for—for training. I’m not supposed to show anyone, but…” He looked around him and met everyone’s eyes. “I can get in real trouble for doing this. Please, don’t tell anyone. If your Nami is here, they might have known associates and other things like that.”

Usopp was next to Coby in an instant, examining the laptop with interest. “I’ve looked up Nami in the police files before, there’s not much there.” Coby looked like he wanted to comment on Usopp’s hacking, but kept it to himself.

“These aren’t police files,” he said. His laptop screen lit up, but everything on it was blurry like it was out of focus. Usopp squinted and rubbed at his eyes. “And this isn’t a regular laptop,” Coby smiled briefly before concentrating and getting to work in the computer. Zoro could tell that things were changing in the screen, but he couldn’t say just what was being done. _Hero tech has always been decades ahead of everything else_ , he thought. Maybe Coby really _was_ a baby Hero.

“Nami… what’s her last name? Nicknames? What does she look like?” Coby asked.

Usopp flipped through pictures in his phone to find a recent one of Nami while Luffy explained that they only ever called her ‘Nami’, and she’d never mentioned any other part of her name. “Here,” Usopp passed Coby the phone.

Coby did a double take when he saw the picture. He paled a little, then looked up to Luffy like he was expecting to be told it was all a joke. “You… _this_ is Nami?”

“You know her?” Luffy asked.

“I…” he bit his lip and looked down at his laptop. He started typing in it. “I’ve seen her before. Months ago. She was…” He trailed off, reading something on the screen. He made a trembling fist over the keyboard before he slammed shut his laptop. Tension coiled around Zoro at Coby’s reaction. There was fear there, but that was nothing new. The worrying part was the pity and anger that burned in the boy's eyes as he looked up at all of them.

“What do you guys know about Arlong Park?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the comments and kudos! They really helped to keep me motivated and to finish this chapter in time, despite it just not cooperating. I blame Bellamy. And Luffy. And the word 'fight'. At least it turned into a pretty eventful chapter. A quick 'translation' note: I'm treating the characters like they're speaking in english, which is why I'm using 'miss Nami' instead of Nami-san and 'friend' instead of 'nakama', but in case anyone cares, I use the other version in my mind as I write :P
> 
> On a technical note, does anyone have a preference for weekly chapters of this length (~6500, 7000 words) against two chapters a week, each one more like 3000, 4000? I don't think I'll change anything near term, but I might try experimenting with faster, shorter chapters in November.
> 
> Next chapter, we catch up with Nami's day, meet Arlong, and get depressed. See you next Wenesday!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few warnings about this one: there are mentions of non-consensual drug use (very brief), and a lot of angst. A loooot of angst.

Arlong was many things, most of them despicable, but one thing Nami always had to give him was that he knew how to make an impression. It was for that reason that, as she waited to be picked up in a street corner in the more affluent part of Loguetown, she knew that the shiny black limousine that pulled up next to her had to be his.

She would much rather have returned to Cocoyasi through her own means. The two hours in public transportation (two different subway lines and a short bus ride) was usually the time she took to get herself out of whatever character she had been playing and back into Arlong’s Nami. Nami couldn’t be sure, but she thought that Arlong knew of her ritual, and that was why he had ‘offered’ to pick her up when she had let him know yesterday she was returning.

The limousine driver, a short dark haired man that wouldn’t meet her eyes, got out and opened the door for her. The inside loomed dark, the tinted windows blocking most of the bright morning sunshine. Nami’s heart was pounding. She knew Arlong enough to know this was a trap, but she also knew that he had all the cards, and that all she could do was spring it and hope for the best.

_You_ _’ve done this before. Don_ _’t panic. Nojiko is counting on you._ Keeping all of the dread and worry inside, she tossed the large burlap sack she carried inside and took the driver’s proffered hand to follow. The first thing that struck her was Arlong’s smell- not exactly bad, but _strong_. It was a smell that set her teeth on edge and made her hyper-vigilant. It was a smell that reminded her, every time she was close to Arlong, of her mother’s death.

The moment the door closed, she felt a powerful wave of regret. She had never felt so alone in her life, though she had returned to Arlong countless times in the last eight years. Could anything have changed, if she’d just talked with Luffy and the others? Or maybe if she hadn’t burned her bridges, she could have come back after-

_Stop that,_ she cut herself off ruthlessly. _This_ was why she had to leave. Hope was like poison, and she had already let herself be exposed too long.

“What’s with the VIP treatment, Arlong?” Nami was relieved that her voice came out even, even a little bit sarcastic. Arlong was like a shark—if he smelled weakness, he would attack. Nami’s eyes were already adjusting to the dim interior, enough now that the shadows at the end of the limo were resolving into Arlong and Kuroobi, his right hand man.

“I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘thank you’, isn’t it?” Kuroobi didn’t like Nami, a sentiment which Nami returned in full. Arlong laughed and waved a large, ringed hand in front of him.

“Now, now. She just wouldn’t be our Nami if she wasn’t an abrasive little witch, would she?” Arlong’s smile had too many teeth to be called friendly.

Nami decided to ignore the exchange entirely, as she usually did whenever Arlong referred to her as his possession. She pulled the burlap sack to her and loosened the openings. “I deposited all the cash into the regular account,” she said. It was an account belonging to a charity in name, which often accepted anonymous donations, and which Arlong then did some accounting magic to move the money into his own coffers without drawing undue attention. Nami wasn’t sure what the process was, exactly, but she knew Arlong had been using it for over a decade without a single less-than-legal deposit being tied back to him. “This should bring the total to at least twice the usual,” she let the opening widen so that Arlong could get a look inside at the goods that would have to be fenced a bit more carefully.

“I’m sure it will,” Arlong said, dismissing her hard-won treasure with a wave. Nami felt a familiar wave of embarrassment and anger. She tried so hard to keep up with Arlong’s unreasonable expectations, but with a single gesture he could dismiss all of her efforts as childish nonsense. “That is not what I wanted to talk with you about.”

Nami said nothing, but she dreaded what he was going to say. Already, her skin felt like it was one size too small, like there was fire and ice spreading out from her shoulders. Arlong always wanted _more_ from her. Over the years, it felt like she was selling herself, piece by piece, to the corrupt businessman. She forced herself not to shudder, or to bring her arms up to hug herself like she had as a child.

“I assumed as much,” she said coldly, closing up her bag, leaning back and crossing her legs. “What is it this time?”

“There’s a job I need you to do,” Arlong leaned forward, putting his chin in one hand. He was devil-born, but he was of Sunmen descent, which meant that his physical peculiarities were far more pronounced than regular supers. His nose was abnormally long, and serrated, and his skin was tinted a light blue color, though that wasn’t apparent in the limo’s dim interior. He wore a dark business suit, tailored perfectly to his body, though open at the chest far enough to spot the edges of the stylized sun he had tattooed over his chest.

Nami relaxed a little. Just a job. A dangerous, urgent one, if she knew Arlong, but it was just a job. Not like when he asked her to act her part as one of his ‘associates’. When she had to be out among people she knew, cementing the relationship with the man she hated above all others. When she would have to meet the eyes of people that knew exactly what Arlong was, and were disgusted by her betrayal of all that her mother had stood for.

“What is it?” Nami asked, already entering her work mode. She was wearing a simple multi-purpose dress and sandals, but depending on the job she would need to change into something that blended in or allowed her more freedom of movement. She was one of Arlong’s best thieves, having both quick fingers for lifting purses or valuables and the composure to use her looks and lie and get herself into and out of most situations.

“A certain police officer has taken to sniffing at our doorstep,” Arlong’s eyes were always the scariest part of him, as far as Nami was concerned. No matter what expression his face made, they were always cold and merciless. “I need you to see what it is he’s found, and deliver a message.”

Nami paused only a moment, but she was sure that Arlong saw it. Thus far, he had stopped short of asking her to kill, perhaps realizing that it was a line Nami was not yet ready to cross, not even for her sister. She was reminded of what Bellemere used to say, _a good leader only ever gives orders they_ _’re sure will be obeyed_.

“The message?” she asked.

“Kuroobi,” Arlong sat back, and Kuroobi drew out a folder from his portfolio. He leaned forward and handed it to Nami, who flipped it open and skimmed its contents.

“You will replace his file’s contents with the last paper in the folder,” Kuroobi said. “and you will go into his daughter’s room and paint a sun over her bed.” Arlong’s companies might be under the saw-nosed shark logo, but the policeman would have to be a complete idiot to miss the meaning behind that ‘message’. Nami flipped through the basic information on the policeman to look at the few lines spared for his family. His daughter was nine.

_She_ _’ll never feel safe in her room again,_ Nami thought. No, it wasn’t an assassination, or even a direct attack upon her, but Nami knew that this was a line she hadn’t crossed before that Arlong was easing her through.

“Is there a problem?” Arlong’s tone was light, teasing. Mocking. Kuroobi was watching her like she was a snake.

“None at all,” she replied, voice hard.

 

They dropped her off in front of Arlong’s hotel. She had rooms at the top floors, same as all of Arlong’s close employees, but she tried to avoid using them as much as possible. Everything that mattered she kept in her sister’s room.

She pretended to head for her room, going so far as entering the building’s lobby before leaving through a side entrance. All she had on her was the much smaller bag in which she carried some clothes, her wallet and her back-up phone. She’d had to dump her usual one when she left Luffy and the others, since she could never be _quite_ sure just how good Usopp was on a computer, even after she’d deprived him of his personal ones.

Arlong Park covered four blocks inside of the Conomi county, and bordered the Cocoyasi district on the east. Every building and business inside the Park belonged to Arlong, and had been built along his personal tastes for large and gaudy. It was Arlong’s personal safe haven, policed by men under his employ like a miniature city and safe from both the legal hand of the government and the illegal hand of criminals.

Nami hated how many nods of acknowledgement and recognition she got from the other inhabitants of Arlong park. She _didn_ _’t_ belong here. Most of Arlong’s supporters were supers, descendants from survivors of the Sunmen Atrocity. On a good day, she could appreciate a little of what Arlong had done in carving out a bit of security for men and women shunned by most of society, even other supers. Sunmen supers could never ‘pass’ for human, so having a place where they were the norm instead of the exception would have seemed like paradise to them.

The problem was that Arlong was an evil bastard, even if he had a soft spot for others like himself. The supers under his command _had_ to know that, but they took his side nonetheless. _That_ was what supers were. They thought themselves different, _better_ than regular humans, and felt justified in making those they saw as lesser suffer.

 Nami wasn’t a Sunmen descendant. She wasn’t a super at all. The only reason she was was that she had caught Arlong’s eye back when he was killing her mother. It could just as easily have been the other way around, with Nojiko running around doing that bastard’s bidding while she stayed, locked up and forced to live her life according to Arlong’s whims. Nami wondered, sometimes, if Nojiko blamed her for the way things had turned out.

 After what felt like an endless passage of time in Arlong’s territory, but was really only a block and a half, Nami was out of it and walking into the familiar streets of Cocoyasi. At least, streets that had once been familiar.

When Nami was small, Cocoyasi had been a small, quiet residential neighborhood under the protection of Quickdraw, a half-retired Superhero famous for being a normal human under the mask. In the eight years since Arlong had taken possession of it, the neighborhood had tuned into something more like a slum or a red-light district. Not everyone could afford to pay Arlong’s ‘protection’ money, and it was nearly impossible to sell their houses once Arlong had become Mayor of Conomi. Some residents had tried leaving, only to be sent ‘messages’ from Arlong like the one Nami would be delivering tonight.

Once Arlong decided something or someone was his, there was no changing his mind. The streets that had once been a home to Nami were now nothing more than a reminder of what she had become.

Nami had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from flinching every time someone on the street gave her a hateful look, or a rude gesture, or in the case of one particularly angry boy, spat at her. She wanted nothing more than to pretend it hadn't happened, but she had a reputation to keep (technically, she had Arlong's reputation to keep), and if it got back to him that she had let such blatant disrespect go unanswered, it would go worse for everybody.

That was why, before she could convince herself otherwise, Nami reached out towards the child and pulled him by the arm to her.

"You have a problem with me?" Her voice was the one she used with Arlong, cold and unfeeling. The boy was young enough that he probably didn't remember a time before Arlong had come along, but old enough to feel he had to do something about it. 

_Damn it, why aren't his parents around to stop him from doing something this stupid?_  She knew the answer to that. Working to pay off Arlong's monthly dues, probably, or else incapacitated by having not paid them before. 

The stupid boy didn't take the opportunity to apologize. "Yes I do! It's all your fault!" He screamed, squirming and trying to get free of her grip. Did he think making a scene would change anything? Sure, a few people were stopping to look, but nobody would interfere. They knew what Arlong did to anyone who stood in the way of his associates. "Everyone says so! You and your stupid mom-"

Her reaction this time was thoughtless. She slapped him, hard enough that he left his accusation unfinished and stopped struggling, bringing up both hands to his face. He looked at Nami with both anger and fear now.

"Don't ever talk about her again," Nami said. "And you better stay out of my fucking way or else next time I'll see about a more permanent solution to your whining." She didn't know if the kid would understand her threat, but she was sure that the bystanders did, and would warn him away as soon as she was out of sight. She shoved the boy to the ground and walked away without a look back.

_Good job, Nami,_ she thought bitterly, _now you_ _’re terrorizing children on your own time as well._

She hurried off the main street as soon as she could, and moved quickly towards the building that had once been her home. Arlong had turned the old apartment building into a brothel four years ago, when Nojiko had turned fifteen. He hadn’t had to say a word for Nami to understand the threat. _Step it up, or else._ Nojiko wasn’t allowed outside that building except on Arlong’s personal command, but to this day Nami wasn’t sure if Nojiko had been forced to sell herself or not.  She always got Arlong his money, but sometimes she was a day late, or else got injured during one of his jobs and didn’t get back to him when he expected her. Arlong never said anything, but there would be a look in his eyes, and Nami could never bring herself to ask.

She ignored the brightly colored doors of the building (closed, since it was too early for business) and went straight for the fire escape that ran down one side. She had to jump to catch the bottom edge of the ladder and bring it down. She climbed onto the first landing and pulled the ladder up behind her.  She had to go up another story to reach the third, and she stopped outside the door with the fading stickers glued on the inside of the glass panel. She felt along the glass behind them, remembering when she, as a young girl, had used them to decorate the window, and Nojiko, as a slightly older little girl, had drawn all over them in marker.

She took a couple of deep breaths before knocking. Keeping her composure around Nojiko was just as important as it was around Arlong, if for completely different reasons.  When nothing happened after a few seconds, she knocked again. Ideally she would have simply called her sister, but her phone had been confiscated two months ago when Nami had finished a job two hours late because she had been forced to climb down from the fourth story of a mansion with a broken arm.

It took four more rounds of knocks before the bolt on the other side of the door slid free and a disheveled, sleepy-looking Nojiko pushed open the door.

“Nami?” she mumbled, pushing a lock of light blue hair from her eyes. Nami found herself frozen just outside the door. Nojiko looked the same as ever, with her short hair, pale skin and skinny figure, wearing only a long green nightshirt that reached down to her thighs and left little to the imagination. She usually didn’t bother to dress up since she was hardly ever allowed outside anyway, though sometimes she would spend the entire day on the stairway landing, just smoking and watching the people in the street.

Nami had seen her look this way and worse a hundred times before. She had been able to hold back her emotions the first time she had noticed the track marks in Nojiko’s arms at thirteen, or when she had seen the bruises and other marks of a beating after Nojiko had tried to escape when she was fourteen, or even when she had come in to see a sixteen-year-old Nojiko sobbing on the ground and clutching a bloodied, mangled arm that had been chewed on by Hachan’s pet monster.

Nami pushed past Nojiko to rush inside. It felt like someone had taken a hold of her heart and _squeezed_. Like she had been living encased in ice for years, and suddenly it had melted and left her nerves raw to the world.

What was _wrong_ with her? Nojiko didn’t even look hurt. Nami knew that she mostly kept to the brothel’s hours because it was impossible to sleep during the night here, so it wasn’t like seeing Nojiko sleep in meant anything bad. In fact, her sleeping was good news. Nami usually knew to worry when her sister’s insomnia started up.

She heard Nojiko shut the door and bolt it. Then she heard her soft footsteps through the cheap carpet, and felt her press up against Nami’s back, her arms circling her in a hug. Nami stiffened, her breaths coming shorter in a desperate effort to keep control of herself. She could see, on her sister’s bare arms, the old needle marks on both elbows, as well as the decorative swirls that she had tattooed into her right arm, of her own design and choosing. That was Nojiko in a nutshell: she might be imprisoned and under constant threat, but she would find her independence nonetheless. Side by side, Nami felt pathetic—Nojiko, chipped and tagged like a misbehaving dog, seemed to find more freedom than Nami, whose leash let her roam the city wherever she pleased.

She wasn’t aware of when she started to cry, but her first sob took her by surprise. She tried to stem the flow of tears and brought her hands to her face in a futile effort to stop her sister from seeing, but Nojiko only hugged her tighter. Nami lost the strength in her legs first, crumpling to the floor with her sister still holding her. She felt seven years old again, and being comforted by her older sister after a nightmare. She turned into Nojiko’s embrace and hugged her back, digging her face into Nojiko’s nightshirt and sobbing even harder.

She had no idea what had come over her. She hadn’t cried outside of acting a single time since Bellemere’s death eight years ago. She hadn’t shown Nojiko any of her pain in years, not wanting to burden her already suffering sister with any of her problems.

_Why now?_ She hadn’t felt this depth of emotions in a long time, not since she had started working on burying all of her feelings so that Arlong couldn’t use them against her.

“Let it all out, Nami,” Nojiko whispered gently, one hand moving up to brush her hair back from her face. “Go on, this has been a long time coming.”

Nami cried harder. She wasn’t even sure what she was crying about; her sister’s pain, her own self-pity, anything or everything that had happened during the last eight years.

They stayed like that for some time, until Nami’s sobs turned to hiccups and she felt she had no more tears left. Nojiko whispered quiet encouragements all the while.

“Are you ready to talk to me about it?” She asked, once Nami was simply leaning against her, her head tucked beneath Nojiko’s chin, her breathing slightly hitched but almost back to normal.

“I don’t…” Nami lifted herself free of her sister and rubbed her face and nose, feeling suddenly embarrassed to have covered Nojiko’s shirt in tears and snot. God, she hadn’t cried like that since… since Bellmere had been alive to give her comfort. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, to lose control like that. She shook her head. “I don’t know what that was.”

Nojiko’s eyes were teary too, and her smile was so much like Bellemere’s that Nami felt her heart breaking.  “Something’s different,” she said.

Nami shook her head again. “Arlong’s making me do more of the same crap,” she said. “Some kid wanted to give me trouble outside, but it was nothing that hasn’t happened before.”

Nojiko gave her a quick, solid bop on the head. Nami looked at her, surprised. “I didn’t say it was _Arlong_. Tell me what’s different, Nami.”

Nami opened her mouth, then shut it. Nojiko didn’t- couldn’t know about Luffy and the others. And even if she did, it was nothing. It was over. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I did what I always do. I tricked a band of stupid supers into letting me stay with them and took everything they had.” The words tasted like ashes in her mouth. “They-” she cut herself off. It was over and done with. Speaking about them more wouldn’t change anything.

Nojiko was frowning. “Alright, if you say so.” She shrugged and got to her feet. “You want some tea?” She asked, moving towards the little kitchenette that doubled as a dining room in the small two-bedroom apartment.

Suspicious that she had given up so quickly, Nami wiped her face with the hem of her dress before getting up. “Yeah, that sounds good,” she said.

Nojiko busied herself with the tea while Nami cleaned up a little in the small bathroom. Once she had come back out, there were two steaming cups on the table, and Nojiko was grinning at her like a cat that just caught a mouse.

“So, Nami, won’t you tell a bored shut-in like me some of the adventures you got into this time around?” Damn it. Nami forgot, sometimes, just how shameless Nojiko was about using any means to get her way.

_I guess a couple of anecdotes wouldn_ _’t do any harm_ _…_

 

The policeman’s name was Purin, and he was a detective who worked major crimes in the neighboring county of Gosa. He had a good record of closing difficult cases and a reputation for being honest and unrelenting. Nami hoped he took Arlong’s threat seriously. There was a lot of good an honest policeman could do out there, if he didn’t get tangled up in Arlong’s web.

Nami had been watching the policeman’s house for close to two hours now. She had a nice vantage point from the attic window of the house across from Purin’s, and she had been in place since eight, waiting for the policeman’s household to go to sleep before she could sneak inside and do her job.

The household whose attic she had borrowed had already gone to bed, so she was amusing herself by playing around on her backup phone while she waited. Usually, she would use the down time to plan for her next job or simply rest, but her earlier visit with Nojiko had left her feeling restless and unproductive. If this hadn’t been a job directly from Arlong, she would have brushed it off to deal with on another day.

_At least it_ _’s not complicated_. Provided she was careful, the job was straight-forward enough. Once Purin and his family were asleep, she would be in and out in less than fifteen minutes. She lost yet another round in the stupid puzzle game she was playing and decided to give up.  If she couldn’t even concentrate on a few pixels on a screen, how was she supposed to pull off a job?

_Get your head in the game,_ she scolded herself. She pulled her backpack closer to her knees and pulled out the folder Kuroobi had given her earlier, flipping through the pages until she reached the last one, which she would be leaving in exchange for whatever research Purin had collected so far.

The message was simple:

  _Thank you for the interest, but if you insist on this course than today will be the last sunrise you or your family will ever see. I only ever give warnings once, Mr.Purin. Speak of me again to anyone, and you_ _’ll get an intimate understanding of the dark sky. -A_

Nami thought the last threat was overly poetic, even for Arlong. Nami hoped that Purin had done enough research on Arlong to take him seriously, despite it.

Finally, she saw the lights go off in the small house across the street. She would have to give it another hour to be sure they were asleep, but already she felt nervous shivers running up and down her arms. What the hell? She hadn’t been this nervous before a job since she was a kid.

It had to be about her strange breakdown earlier with Nojiko. Or about whatever it was that had caused it in the first place. Nojiko’s words continued to echo in her mind, hours later. _Tell me what_ _’s different_. Because something _had_ changed.

It was like she had been sleep-walking through life, fallen into a holding pattern as Arlong’s tool. Her situation was, if miserable, at least predictable. As long as she did his jobs and paid off her monthly dues, she and Nojiko would be safe—for a certain value of safe. She would leave on her own for a few weeks at a time, inserting herself into some two-bit super gang only to rob them blind and, more often than not, deliver incriminating evidence to the police or Superheroes for them to deal with. If the money she earned was enough, she could get extra privileges for Nojiko, such as books, online classes and the eventual high school degree she had earned.

Her life was a never-ending cycle of working harder to earn more money, burying her emotions deeper to work harder, the jobs themselves numbing her and enabling her to do more of them. Meeting with Arlong was easier when she wasn’t feeling the pain of losing Bellemere constantly, working was better when guilt wasn’t eating away at her for Nojiko’s imprisonment, and doing all of the toxic little things Arlong had her do was only possible when she treated them like business transactions and not like every act was tainting her soul.

Today had felt like finally waking up. Everything that she had been avoiding and pushing out of her mind had come rushing in. She couldn’t stand for Nojiko to be locked up even another minute, and doing _anything_ that Arlong wanted her to made her want to scream and scratch out his stupid tattoo on her arm. She wanted nothing more than to run into the policeman’s house and pour her heart out, and maybe, _maybe_ get Arlong arrested and finally out of her life.

In short, she had crazy. She _knew_ that none of that would work. Arlong wouldn’t be taken down by some maverick cop. He couldn’t be taken down by anyone. Nami doing anything against him would only hurt Nojiko.

She wondered what Luffy would do in her situation.

_He would never_ be _in my situation; he_ _’s a super._

He would fight so that both himself and Nojiko could be free.

_There would be no decision for him there, since he_ _’s strong, and has powers, and his solution to everything is to fight._

Except that Luffy wasn’t invincible, and he knew it. He was simply willing to die to live his life like he wanted to.

_That_ _’s easy to say when you_ _’re strong enough to fight back, and risk nothing but yourself. I_ am _fighting, but in the only way I can._

But Luffy would have fought for _her_ freedom, if she’d only asked. So would Zoro and Usopp.

_No, no, no. I_ _’ve been over this. They would only lose, and suffer, and all because of me._ Better to just go along and keep things as they were. Luffy and the others would get over her, find someone else, and move on. And she would stay as Arlong’s pet thief, miserable and without hope of things ever getting better, and feeling like she had ripped out her own heart.

It was too late to change her mind, anyway. None of them would help her after what she had done, purposefully striking where the betrayal would be felt worst. She had meant to call the police as well, but she couldn’t stand the thought of Luffy in jail. She’d done the next worst thing and sold their whereabouts to Joker’s people. To men like them, who already had trust issues, the building had been a sanctum, and her exposing it to enemies would be unforgiveable.

She had to stop thinking about it. She had made her bed, and now she would lay in it. After this job she would take a small break and get over whatever madness had come over her. For now, she had to focus.

She sat quietly for an hour, just breathing and trying to clear her mind. The cold outside was seeping into the attic through the open skylight, helping her reach a calm, detached mental place. She wore her sneaking clothes, black yoga pants and a black hoodie along with soft, thin-soled tennis shoes and leather gloves. She carried her go bag, a small dark backpack in which she carried most of her tools of the job as well as Kuroobi’s folder.

When she finally felt more like herself she left, pulling herself up and out of the skylight, then clambered down the side of the house with a couple of careful jumps, first onto a window sill and then down into the lawn.

The suburban neighborhood felt unreal under the dim light of street lamps and shrouded in the night’s silence. Nami moved across to the front of the house at a measured pace, knowing that movement drew the eye far better in darkness. Once she reached the street she ran across it to Purin’s front lawn, then jumped the fence to get access to the back door.

She slipped her set of lockpicks from her backpack, feeling first to see if they had left it unlocked. No such luck in a policeman’s house, she noted. She took out her flashlight out flipped it on, then put it in her mouth, pointing at the door. She wasn’t nearly as good at picking locks as she was at sneaking around or pickpocketing, but given time she could open almost any regular lock, and this one was a very simple one.

Five minutes later she heard the satisfying click of an open lock and put her tools back into her pack. She turned the handle slowly, making as little noise as she could, and snuck inside with her flashlight still in her mouth, pointing down.

Purin’s house had a simple layout: three bedrooms (one of which had been converted into a study), two bathrooms, a kitchen and a dining area, all spread out across a single floor. Nami already knew where everything was from the floor plan that Kuroobi had included in the file. She went straight for the study, thinking that it was the most likely place she would find work-related papers, as well as it having been the last light that had been on before the house had gone dark.

The door to the main bedroom, where Purin and his wife slept, was only partially closed, so Nami made sure to be extra careful to be silent when she passed by. The study door wasn’t locked, and she was both relieved and disappointed to find that he kept all of his files in a messy pile right on top of his desk. What was this guy doing going after Arlong if he was going to be _this_ sloppy?

She found the file labeled ‘Sunman, Arlong’ in less than a minute, near the top of the pile. He must have been working on it recently, though it didn’t have much inside. Unable to stifle her curiosity, she flipped it open and looked inside. There were some newspaper clippings inside; one from a few years before on the opening of Arlong Park, and then another one about him becoming the mayor, which had caused a major news storm at the time, since he was the first Sunman descendant to be elected into public office.

Behind the clippings were a lot of legal-looking papers that dealt with real estate and who owned what buildings in Arlong Park, as well as other pages with bank logos in the corner. These she flipped through quickly, knowing that it would take her untrained eye far too long to get anything from them. One page in particular called her attention, from the number of highlighted lines and sticky notes pasted around it. Nami took a closer look at it and frowned. It was a report of missing people—missing supers, to be exact. There were eighteen faces printed out in two sheets of paper, along with basic information just below each. Five of them had been crossed out in red and marked _dead_ , seven had been marked with a little star, and a post-it next to the first one had ‘dark Colosseum?’ written on it. Three, though, had been circled several times, and each had was marked with a blue post-it that had dates and times scrawled on top, and ‘last seen in Arlong Park’ at the bottom.

There was a handwritten page of notes behind those two sheets, littered with sentences like ‘abnormal energy use’, ‘contact with Cesar?’, and ‘what does he want??’. Nami bit her lip and hesitated, but before she could talk herself out of it she folded the three pages twice and slipped them into her pocket. The rest she put into Kuroobi’s folder, and she put Arlong’s warning note into Purin’s now empty file, which she left in the center of Purin’s desk, where he couldn’t help but notice it the next time he came in. Then she took out the marker from her backpack and went to the girl’s room.

She had a job to finish.

 

Arlong sent a cab to pick her up this time. He must have been really curious to see what Purin had dug up on him. As Nami rode back, she was extra conscious of the papers in her pocket, and conflicted over what to do about them. She wanted to take the time to look through them carefully, but she knew that the minute she handed them over to Arlong she would never see them again. She could snap a quick picture of them before handing them over, but she had a feeling that Arlong routinely checked all of her electronic data (he bought her the phones, after all), and she couldn’t chance him finding out.

Then again, if he found out she was trying to keep something from him that he had specifically asked for, the results wouldn’t be pretty. She should just put it all back in the folder, pretend the creases had always been there, and forget about the whole thing.

Only she couldn’t, not that day. Not when she was facing the rest of her life with no hope, and even a tiny bit of leverage could change things. Not when all she could think about was Nojiko, never leaving that stupid apartment building ever again.

It was stupid, and would probably get her killed or worse, but she had decided to fight back, in the only way that she could. Alone, because she was the only person she could really trust. But not hopeless, and not defeated. Purin might have to give up his investigation, but Nami’s could pick up where he left off. She could work towards something better.

The cab dropped her off in front of Arlong’s hotel, where she was met by an irate-looking Kuroobi that nearly dragged her free of the car. “Get in here,” he snapped.

“Whoa, keep it together, I’m not even late,” Nami snapped back.

“You didn’t think it was worth mentioning that you had _Captain Smoker_ after you?” He growled under his breath as he took her by her arm and dragged her across the lobby inside. “Or that you would have a gang of supers with him on their tail chasing after you?”

Nami was so surprised by what he had said that she let him drag her along without complaint. Smoker? And… a gang was chasing after her? Damn, had she read Luffy so wrong? Were they so angry that they had come for revenge? How had they even found her?

Kuroobi took them both straight to Arlong’s private elevator, where he punched in the button to the penthouse floor with her arm still in his bruising hold.

“Smoker shouldn’t have been able to place me,” Nami finally said. “I was hiding my hair and face.”

“You’ve been spotted with this group before, apparently,” Kuroobi said acidly. Nami thought back to the altercation with Buggy last week. She really _was_ off her game, if she hadn’t come to that conclusion on her own.

“Who came after me?” She asked, numb.

“Oh, you’ll have a chance to see him soon enough,” Kuroobi said. “And you better hope Arlong believes whatever lies you try to spin, little witch, or you’ll both be just another blood splatter on the pavement.” He sounded positively gleeful at the prospect

Nami swallowed. Arlong hadn’t thrown anyone off a building since that desperate guy had tried to shoot him during a meeting seven years ago. The result had given her nightmares for weeks. If it was Luffy, though, and he hadn’t blurted out about his rubber body, then he could survive a fall like that. She really didn’t want him on her conscience.

When the elevator doors opened, she felt like a nervous wreck. The first thing she saw inside was Arlong’s cast sitting room, complete with a shallow pool and a throne-like couch around which Arlong’s two friends, Hatchan and Chu, stood talking. Arlong himself was sprawled in the couch, half-listening, but she could see him focus all his attention on her once the elevator doors opened.

The second thing she noticed was the bloodied body at Arlong's feet, and the familiar head of green hear attatched to it. _Zoro_. Fuck, and here she had thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your reviews, they were awesome :) . I get the feeling people like the Zoro chapters better than the other ones (they do tend to have more action, for whatever reason...). Nami's chapter ended up darker and more depressing than I was expecting it to, but then again she does have a lot of stuff to work out for herself. She can't start to get better until she faces up to how bad it really is.
> 
> My Arlong arc is finally underway! It will be quite a bit different than the original, though it will hit a few of the same marks. Next chapter will be out Wednesday, and we'll get to see what Sanji thinks of Luffy's 'genious' plan to get to Nami. Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment if you liked it!


	8. The incredible adventures of Mighty Usopp and Uncertain Sanji

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I'm alive! Yey? I haven't dropped the story, and I don't plan to (I have the rest of the Arlong arc plotted out). Grad school really kicked my ass for a while there, but I've decided that I need to get back to writing for my own sanity. For everyone who wrote reviews and left me kudos, you are all awesome! They really motivated me to get back to writing. If there's anyone still around who wants to keep reading, thank you so much! I don't think I'll be able to get back to posting once a week like before, but I'm aiming for a chapter twice a month. Enjoy!

Sanji didn’t consider himself a good person. He knew, better than most people, just what being devil-born made him; and more to the point, what it didn’t. Where most of his kind could defend the worst of their actions behind the excuse that it was only in their nature, Sanji knew just where the line that separated decision from compulsion lay, and still chose to cross it more often than not. Sure, the heritage of the devil-fruit made one’s blood sing for conflict, to _move_ , to _fight_ , to _act_. It was a high that normal people only ever reached when drugged out of their minds, to be a devil-born in the middle of a fight. For most devil-born, there was no conscious decision involved—it was akin to a switch that went off in their brains and left them with no more choice than a shark in a tank with wounded prey.

Most devil-born alive today were second or third generation—the product of a parent or grandparent that was a fruit-user—and grew up with no idea what their heritage meant for them. Even as they became more and more commonplace throughout the world, the public in general had very little understanding of what they were capable of and what they had to go through. The prevalent superstition that they were ‘cursed’, believed by quite a few devil-born Sanji had met, helped no one. All the trouble and damage that young devil-born caused became fuel in the fire of superstition, rather than evidence that the child was struggling with instincts and desires that ran contrary to society’s values. That didn’t mean they had to be slaves to them; in their ignorance, however, they were protected from deeper self-examination.

Sanji didn’t have the comfort of that ignorance, not when he had been raised knowing exactly what he was and what that meant. He might have left his first family— ‘ _family_ ’—before he was ten, but their teachings had seeped into every part of his soul, indelible in the blood he shared with them, however unwillingly.

In short, Sanji was violent, did little to rein in his temper, purposefully taunted dining guests and flirted with everything female and with a pulse, and he was selfish. And all of it was him, not his heritage. Even the few times he would help others (that weren’t women, because they didn’t count, and it was part of his abnormality, so he _really_ couldn’t help it), it was for a selfish reason. So, no, he wasn’t a good person. He was someone who knew how to take care of himself, and maybe a bit of how to watch out for one other person (Zeff: he had to take care of the old man because the shitty old bastard had helped _him_ when he could have let him rot, even if it was his fault they were suffering in the first place).

So why, why in the name of all his fucking ancestors and white-caped Heroes was he helping these strangers in their quest to rescue a girl he barely knew, who was probably fine and wouldn’t thank them for their efforts if she knew what they were trying?

Luffy’s friend, Coby, was giving the others a halting, sensationalist overview of Arlong and his territory. None of it was new to Sanji—even while living in the opposite corner of the city from that man’s territory, he had heard of the only Sunmen mayor in East City, possibly the highest position any Sunmen super had reached anywhere in the world. Sanji personally knew little of Sunmen, though he had fought against some and knew of their origins. In the 65 years since the Sunmen atrocity that created them, public sentiment had gone from pity and acceptance of the fleeing refugees to a strange mix of superiority, disgust and fear against the monstrous-looking, much stronger supers. Sanji couldn’t begin to imagine the amount of maneuvering, bribes and behind-the-scenes arrangements it must have taken for Arlong to rise to a legal position as mayor of Orange county, since he sincerely doubted the people there would elect him to the position given the chance.

The story Coby was spinning was one of a crime lord turned politician; a ruthless monster with his hands in just about every illegal activity in the region, including kidnapping, extortion and murder. A monster who had crafted his public persona so well that no Superhero could raise their hands against him, because there was simply _no evidence_. Worse, because of his lawful, public office, he could request assistance from them, and they were obligated to give it.

“If you go after Arlong, you could end up fighting against a lot of the city’s Heroes,” Coby explained, nervously wringing his hands above his closed laptop.

Sanji gave an inward sigh. If Coby understood anything at all about devil-born, he wouldn’t have put it that way. Zoro’s and Luffy’s eyes were lit with excitement, and he was very much aware of the way his own pulse was pounding through his veins. At least _he_ knew how to put a lid on the flood of anticipation that was trying to rise at the thought of a new fight.

“It wouldn’t help miss Nami,” Sanji said, in a half-hearted attempt to head off the conflict that both Zoro and Luffy clearly yearned for.

“But now we know who the bad guy is,” Luffy said, grinning over at him with all the excitement of a five-year-old cheering on the hero in a television show. “So, to save Nami we just have to beat that guy up!”

“We don’t know he’s anything to Nami,” Sanji argued. “All we know is that your friend thinks he saw them together once. Even if he did,” he added quickly to cut off Coby’s argument, “it could be nothing more than a one-time thing. Or maybe Nami freelances for him sometimes.” Sanji shrugged, “we don’t really know anything more than we did when we got here.”

Coby looked relieved. Usopp was nodding along, though there was a thoughtful frown on his face. “But he’s a bad guy,” Luffy said, apparently ignoring everything else Sanji had said.

“This city has a lot of bad guys,” Sanji said. Luffy shook his head.

“Nami wouldn’t help out a bad guy,” he said with complete conviction. _What does that make you, mister self-proclaimed supervillain?_

“While I’m sure miss Nami is a lovely person, she _is_ also a criminal. You know, like all of you- us, now, I suppose- are.” Sanji said. Luffy shook his head again, and this time it was Zoro who spoke.

“There’s a difference, eyebrows, and you know what it is.” There was something like disappointment— or was it disgust? — in the swordsman’s tone, and it stung Sanji more than he thought it should.

“And of course you’re certain that everything your completely unbiased friend here said is the truth?” He snapped back.  “There’s no way that the reports he received were in any way influenced by racist sentiment against Sunmen, exaggerated to paint them in the worst possible light?”

“He’s careful from a personal, legal standpoint,” Coby interjected, looking nervously between the two of them, but clearly determined to head off the argument before it got any worse, “but the statistics of his territory don’t lie. Crime has shot upwards ever since he moved in, while the general living conditions of the residents, outside Arlong Park, have gone down. He pins it all on ‘gangs of supers’ that took up residence following him in, but you only have to read between the lines to know he’s got to, at the very least, be implicit in it.”

Sanji huffed and gave up the argument, wishing he could light up his cigarette and smoke away some of the tension crawling through his shoulders. He knew Coby was right, and he didn’t really believe Arlong was an upstanding citizen any more than he thought Supers were well-balanced individuals, but he hated giving in to that moss-head idiot. That bastard had been giving Sanji odd looks ever since the fight earlier that day, like he knew something about Sanji but was choosing not to say it, and it was making Sanji’s skin crawl.

_It’s that bastard’s fault I got pulled into the fucking Colosseum’s attention,_ he remembered, nausea roiling in his stomach. He pushed it out of his mind. There would be time to deal with that particular disaster later, and he really, _really_ didn’t want to think about it.

“So…” Luffy grinned, either ignorant of the tension between his swordsman and Sanji or choosing to ignore it. “To save Nami we just have to beat that guy up!”

Sanji buried his face in his hands, and he felt Usopp clap him on the back in commiseration.

“No, Luffy!” Coby looked on the verge of tears. “You’ll end up fighting a ton of Heroes and even then-”

“-even then we wouldn’t necessarily help Nami,” Usopp finished. Sanji looked at him. He hadn’t thought the boy had changed his mind about her betrayal. It was a little hard to read him with half his face covered with bandages that held his broken nose in place, but he was looking at Coby with a strange eagerness that Sanji found disconcerning. “What we need is more research, and a plan, right? I’ve made plans for far more difficult endeavours! Why, once, I took down the great Black Cat, infamous supervillain, by simply-”

“I’ve never fougth Sunmen supers before,” Zoro said thoughtfully, speaking over Usopp’s increasingly inplausible story, his hand stroking the hilt of his swords.

“It’s settled!” Luffy exclaimed, pointing a finger in a direction Sanji assumed was at random, since Arlong’s district was nowhere along that line. “Zoro and I will go beat up Arlong, then ask Nami what she wants!”

_Shouldn’t that be the other way around?_

“Usopp and Sanji will stay and figure out where Nami is!”

_You’re not even sure she is with Arlong and you’re still going after him?_

_“_ Hey, wait a minute, I’m not-” He’d barely started to speak before Luffy took a hold of his hat and ran off, Zoro only a step behind him. “-one of you guys…” Sanji finished under his breath. Coby was clutching his special computer to his chest like it was a security blanket, eyes wide and staring desperately at the retreating figures of his friends.

“They can take care of themselves,” Usopp said, but Sanji could see the way his shoulders slumped in relief at being left out of the fighting.

“And they’re going the wrong way, so chances are they won’t find Arlong for days…” Sanji added, shaking his head. He didn’t know what was worse, that Luffy had assumed he was one of his crew and ordered him around as such, or that he was actually considering doing just that. _It would be to help a pretty lady out of trouble_ , he rationalized.

The three of them, Coby, Usopp and Sanji, made their way to a remote picnic table at the edge of the plaza, where Usopp managed to talk Coby into letting him use his secret computer, all the while swearing up and down that he wouldn’t use it for anything illegal. Sanji didn’t know if it was just that Luffy had left the poor boy dazed in his wake or if he really was that naive, but he actually felt a little guilty at taking advantage of Coby’s helpful nature.

“You are a devil-born, you know,” he said to him, taking advantage of the isolated table to light his cigarette, smoke-free campus be damned. His body relaxed within seconds of his first inhale, and he leaned back against the table, his legs stretched out on top of the grass while Usopp started excitedly tapping away at his keyboard.

Coby, who must have just realized that his two friends had stranded him with two strangers he knew almost nothing about, was looking at Usopp like he already regretted his decision but didn’t know how to take it back. He sighed and slumped, then took a seat next to Sanji, but facing the other direction at table and directly across from Usopp.

“No, I’m not,” Coby sighed, like this was something he’d had to explain a thousand times throughout his life. “Apart from weird hair, I don’t have the strength, or the endurance, or the… well, the crazyness of a devil-born.”

“Mmm,” Sanji said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “And yet here you are, a baby Hero.”

Coby threw him a quick glare. “I want to do good. Not all Heroes are supers, you know.”

“Yeah, but all the long-lived ones are,” Sanji retorted. Coby’s face grew red and he glared at the table.

“The world needs more Heroes who don’t salivate at the thought of a fight,” he said, with the confidence that comes from reciting a quote. Sanji wondered who had been feeding him that particular brand of propaganda but decided not to push him too far. He was, if nothing else, earnest, and though he had his doubts about why the baby Hero program had accepted him, he could see the benefits of having less trigger-happy individuals in positions of power.

“Oi, long nose, you doing anything there or are you just trying to look busy?” He swung around to face the table, blowing out a puff of smoke to the side.

“The name is Usopp, you perverted chef, and I don’t have to _try_ to look busy.” He lifted his eyes briefly from the laptop to meet Sanji’s. “ _I’m_ trying to find _my_ crewmate, what are you doing?”

“Killing time while I wait for a certain obsessive Hero to forget about me, so I can go back to my job,” Sanji replied in a deadpan. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and Usopp was the first to look away and back at the computer.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t stay and get more involved,” Usopp said, a strange quiver in his words. “I can take care of myself. I can follow these leads to Nami and find her and be a hero without anyone’s help, because I am the amazing Usopp, who…” his typing grew more furious, “can do…” he leaned forward, his eyes scanning all over the screen, “anything!” he hit a last key and pushed the laptop from his face, grinning triumphantly. He turned the screen towards Sanji and Colby, who had to cram together to make out, on the screen, a map of East City, on which a little blue dot hovered conspicuously above a neighborhood named ‘Cocoyashi’.

“You’re terrified to go alone,” Sanji guessed. Usopp flinched, then bristled and started another tirade of brags about his incredible talents at everything. Sanji might almost believe him a devil-born, if only because the compulsive lying would be perfectly at home among other personality defects of his kind, though he supposed those with devil heritage hardly had the exclusive rights to bad personality traits.

He finished his cig, tapping the ashes down on the side of the bench, then tossing the butt of the cigarette into a corner beneath a bush, and was met by a glare from Coby. What? It was all paper, plants and ashes, perfectly biodegradable.

“If miss Nami is in trouble, it is my duty as a gentleman to assist her,” he said to Usopp, though he hardly considered himself a gentleman, and he knew his reasons were far more complicated than that. Not that it wasn’t _a_ reason. If he saved her, and she was grateful, well, he would hardly say no to a hug from a beautiful woman, or maybe a kiss or a date…

“I really don’t want to know what he’s thinking,” Usopp said, sotto voice, to Coby. Sanji turned whatever strange expression had been on his face to a frown for the two men staring at him.

“How did you…” Coby started, looking at his computer. “What did you do?”

“I had trackers put into our phones not long ago,” Usopp said, thumbing his nose, then yelping when he remembered it was broken, and continuing in a very nasal tone. “I just had to reactivate Nami’s and link back into my system. I keep everything important on a cloud, of course, so Nami’s little destructive bent didn’t ruin everything.”

Coby looked impressed. Usopp turned the laptop back to him and started typing again, narrating to Coby and Sanji as he did. “Now I just have to transfer the work over to my phone so I can still track her after I leave, since I guess you won’t let us take your computer…?” Coby’s enthusiastic protest left no room for doubt what he thought about that idea. “Yeah, yeah, just give me a minute.”

Coby crossed his arms and sighed again. “I’m going to be in so much trouble…” he whimpered.

Sanji watched Coby while he waited for Usopp to finish. He wasn’t sure what to think of the boy; on the one hand he was loud and complained about everything, but on the other he still risked his neck out for Luffy just because he was asked. He seemed a little incompetent and dangerously naive, but also earnest in a way Sanji had seldom encountered. He reminded him, Sanji realized with a sick flash, of _her_.

_Leave it be, idiot,_ he chastised himself. _That shitty spy showing up is just dredging up my past in all kinds of new, shitty ways, that’s all. They’re nothing alike_.

“Done,” Usopp said, taking out his phone and sliding his finger across its screen. A duplicate map of the one on the computer appeared. He closed the laptop and slid it over to Coby, though his hand lingered above it for a moment like he didn’t want to let it go. He looked at Sanji. “Let’s go get our thief,” he said.

Sanji grinned. “To the bus station, my sidekick.” As expected, that caused Usopp to start in on an extended rant of how, if anyone was the sidekick, it was Sanji. Before they left, Sanji made a last moment decision and clasped Coby’s hand in goodbye. The boy looked startled, somewhere between pleased and conflicted, and on an impulse Sanji leaned in close to his ear and whispered a secret few people outside the Central City elites knew.

Coby drew back from him, looking more confused than impressed.

“Come find me after everything’s over if you’re interested in knowing more,” Sanji said, waving to him before digging out another cigarette and placing it, unlit, in his mouth. Usopp looked between him and Coby, having missed the exchange, but then shrugged and said his own goodbyes to Coby. As they left the campus, Sanji wondered if Nami was really in trouble, and found himself hoping that there would still be some fighting to be done when he caught up to the two idiots with the head start. 

 ~~~--~~~

The county of Conomi was like a worm-eaten apple; it looked normal on the outside, but a closer look revealed a hollow and rotting interior. At first there was nothing to distinguish it from the numerous other agricultural districts that Sanji and Usopp had passed while riding the bus on the way to the city’s outskirts, where the district lay. Sanji had never been in this part of East City, but he knew it was in these regions where some of the food was grown, and that each had a central region which held the business and governmental buildings. Sanji could easily imagine them being small towns at one point in the past, before the city’s ever expanding envelope grew to include them.

As they passed the Cocoyashi district and made for Conomi’s center (the region of a few blocks Arlong had bought, rebuilt and renamed Arlong Park), Sanji began to notice details that were off, that hinted at what was really happening under Arlong’s direction. As fields of fruit trees gave way to blocks with houses and stores, there was a feeling of abandonment to the region, though no house or building was boarded over or otherwise obviously falling apart. Very few people walked the streets, and those that did walked fast and with a purpose, hardly lifting their eyes from the ground. Just before they reached the bus stop at Arlong Park, Sanji saw a woman quickly pick up a child, no older than 5, who had started to cry, and instead of comforting him she simply pushed him against her chest and hurried off the streets.

Arlong park was an abrupt return to form to an East City neighborhood. Tall, striking buildings, modern looking and a little gaudy, but certainly indicating a good amount of wealth. People walked the streets easily, and here Sanji had to do a double-take, because most of the people moving around were of Sunmen descent, with the extreme physical abnormalities that distinguished them in plain view, without any attempt to hide.

“Th-That’s a lot of supers…” Usopp was also looking out the window with wide eyes. He looked nervously down at his phone, as if hoping the pin that led to Nami had changed positions again, this time away from the base of a crew of over-powered supers. Sanji took a look at the map, then clapped Usopp on the shoulder.

“Come on, this is our stop,” he couldn’t help the thrill of excitement he felt as he walked out the bus and was met with a few hostile stares from passing pedestrians. If there was anyone that Sunmen mistrusted more than regular humans, who shunned them for their appearance, it was other non-Sunmen supers, who often targeted them in attacks due to a broad range of racist motivations, anything from wanting to feel superior to someone ‘more cursed’ to wanting to see if Sunmen supers really were stronger than regular devil-born.

“She was in another town just an hour ago,” Usopp whined, pulling his phone into his pocket and looking around suspiciously.

“And she’s here now,” Sanji said, taking out a cigarette to finally light up. The bus driver had looked like he would throw them out of the bus if he had tried to light one inside, and although Sanji would usually be fine getting into that fight, he had other things in mind for that day. He took a long inhale from the cigarette and stepped closer to the building in front of the bus stop, which looked to be a fancy hotel of some sort. According to Usopp’s tracker, Nami was inside somewhere, and had been for the last twenty minutes.

They had already wasted an hour going in the wrong bus at first, since she had been in another district entirely when they began to track her. It turned out that following a person by bus was not a very fast or precise method. They had been forced to return to the hub at Loguetown to find another bus heading in the right direction. A cab would have been much faster and convenient, but neither Usopp nor Sanji had more than a few hundred bellies between them, so they were stuck with the bus system.

He still expected to beat Luffy and Zoro here. Despite their head start, they had been running off in no particular direction, and as far as Sanji was concerned, exceptional luck was not a skill given by devil fruit or super heritage.

“But what are we going to do?” Usopp hissed, a little panic creeping into his voice by the word, “She’s in Arlong Park, which means she’s with Arlong like Coby said. Even if she doesn’t like him—which, do we even know that’s true? I mean, she’s a greedy thief, and here she has a boss that can protect her from the law and give her a nice place to stay and pay her even more money?” His voice had been getting louder and louder, and Sanji had to grab his arm and drag him into a nearby alley to keep him from making a scene.

As much as he wanted to come to Nami’s defense, he had to admit that Usopp had a valid point, and also had the advantage over him on knowing Nami for more than a few hours. Every one of Sanji’s opinions about her were based on his unfounded belief that she was in pain, and had been that way for a very long time, and that she needed help but would never ask for it. All of it was ridiculous, he knew, and likely born of a combination of his past and his own devil-born abnormality, but there would be no convincing his heart of that.

He only hoped things ended better now than the last time he’d convinced himself a woman needed his help.

“Seeing how she was outside not too long ago, she’s clearly not being detained inside,” Sanji reasoned, trying to focus on the hard facts. He wanted to convince himself not to run inside and start attacking people while calling her name, since that _really_ didn’t seem like a good idea, despite being what his stupid instincts were telling him to do. “We could wait to speak with her once she comes back out.”

Usopp stared at him with his mouth hanging open, like he’d just suggested they go to the moon instead. Feeling exposed and annoyed, Sanji let him go and took a calming drag from his cigarette.

“That’s… a completely reasonable suggestion,” he said, blinking rapidly, then looking around himself like he wanted to make sure where he was. Sanji rolled his eyes at the theatrics.

“Glad you approve,” he said drily.

“I-I mean, it’s just… there’s no charging headfirst into a place filled with enemies that could kill you and disappear the bodies, or yelling at the top of your lungs that you are going after a supervillain that has already killed heroes, or-” he shook his head.

“We could go in and attack some people, if that would make you feel better,” Sanji suggested, a smirk tugging at his lips. If it wasn’t for the fact that Usopp needed someone looking after him if things got serious, Sanji might have done just that. He could be patient when he had to (there was no way he could be a cook if that wasn’t the case), but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it.

“W-what?! No-no, that’s fine! I liked your first plan better! It’s so good I almost thought it was my own! And my plans are great, no, perfect!” Usopp laughed nervously, then turned to look at the building across from them while clinging to the alley and biting his thumb. “Of course, now that we know where she is, we could go back, wait for Luffy and Zoro, and then tell _them_ where she is,” he whispered.

“Nah, that would be a waste of a trip, wouldn’t it?” Sanji asked, taking position on the building opposite the one Usopp was using as cover and also looking at the building. At least 8 floors, if he wasn’t mistaken, which looked ridiculously tall in the mostly rural neighborhood.

“We had no idea there would be so many…” Usopp’s voice trailed off as a person walked down the sidewalk in front of them, giving them both odd looks. His skin was pink like a peach’s and there was something that looked like scales down the side of his face. Usopp waited until the man was out of earshot before finishing. “So many _supers_. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to die!”

“And we lose nothing by waiting a few hours to see if miss Nami decides to leave the building on her own,” he said. Usopp bit his lip and looked back at the tall building. He took a deep breath, then nodded.

“Right. We’re just regular people with nothing to do here. No one has any reason to attack us.” He looked back at Sanji, regaining some confidence. “We can just find a cafe or something and wait for her to come out.”

Sanji shrugged. “Alright.” As Usopp dove into his phone to find the appropriate place, Sanji felt something in his pocket vibrate. He felt a sudden spread of naked fear spread through his body before he remembered that he _did_ have a phone, one of his stashed cache of phones that he had recovered on the way to the university earlier. He had about twenty hidden away at different places all around the underground in case of emergencies, all previously unused and good for just about one call. In that and food, neither he nor Zeff were ever stingy.

“Alright, there’s one just around the corner…” Usopp said, looking around before ducking back out of the alley and going down the street to the left.

“I’ll meet you there,” Sanji said distractedly, staying in the alley and slipping the cheap little brick of a phone from his pocket. The vibration had come from a text message, not a call. He frowned. No one should have his number. Well, Zeff _could_ have it, but he wouldn’t know that Sanji had retrieved this particular phone, and he wouldn’t be doing something so stupid as sending out texts to all of Sanji’s possible numbers.

_No games. Meet me tonight -RL_

 

Sanji felt like all the air had been knocked out of his lungs, and he was lucky he had already been leaning against a wall, or he might have fallen. How the _fuck_ had that shitty spy gotten a hold of his number? He had activated the phone less than three hours ago, and had done nothing with it since! Hell, the bastard had only been aware that he was alive since the night before! The only way he could have gotten his contact that fast was-

It was-

Sanji bit down hard on his cigarette and refused to finish that thought. With fingers too clumsy from adrenaline, he slowly clicked his way through a message of his own.

 

_tell me hes fine or ill kill you_

He knew it was stupid, and careless, and a million other things, but he didn’t hesitate to send it back. Whatever problems he and Zeff had, and hells, those were endless, he didn’t want the shitty old man dead. Especially not because of _him_.

The reply took less than a minute to return.

 

_You gave someone a way to reach you when you go off grid?_

Then another

_How careless of you_

Another

_Thanks for the info_

Sanji gritted his teeth in frustration at both himself and the asshole on the other end of the line. Fuck, stupid mistake. The stupid phone buzzed again, and he mentally cursed the shitty spy for sending the message in such a scattered way. His stupid cheap phone had no way to display more than one message at a time and he had a hard time opening the rest.

 

_Honestly, I thought you were better than that_

 

Sanji cracked the screen from how hard he was clutching the phone. Stupid jackass.

 

_Meet me tonight and he’ll never have to see me again_

Sanji glared at the phone, but he didn’t see many options. He wanted nothing more than to stay away from the spy, but unless he was willing to let Zeff be targeted because of him, he would have to at least hear him out. _Fuck_. Staying out of reach from that bastard had been the main reason why he had been fine with staying away from the restaurant.

 

The phone buzzed again.

 

_You owe me._

 

And wasn’t that a truth that Sanji hated. He typed back.

 

_you didnt do it to help me you got what you wanted leave me alone_

Not ten seconds later, a reply.

 

_That doesn’t matter._

_You owe me, and you know that._

_Meet me and we can discuss how to be even._

_Even_. Sanji didn’t want to think about what might be involved in getting that to happen.

 

_im busy not close_

He took a deep breath as he remembered where he was, and why. The spy wasn’t anywhere near him— not even he could be in full disguise in a town full of Sunmen supers. Lucci might have more leverage than him, but Sanji wasn’t completely at his mercy.

 

_Keep this number._

_I’ll contact you later._

_Don’t try to run._

Sanji stared at the last words, his face twisted into an angry scowl. That bastard wasn’t the only reason he was so paranoid about changing phones. Hell, he wasn’t even the largest reason. Before last night, he had barely spared a thought to him in the last nine years.

Feeling far too vulnerable, he tucked the phone back into his pocket and took a minute to finish his cigarette and clear his mind. He would deal with the phantoms of his past later. Right now he had committed himself to helping out Usopp, and he would do that. It might even prove a nice distraction.

He dropped the cigarette butt to the ground and stepped on it. Lucci could wait. Figuring out a way to get the better of him could wait too. He needed to see this Nami thing through to its end first, and then he could bid farewell to the bizarre group of supervillains he’d unwittingly attached himself to and figure out a way to fix his life.

_Like that’s ever worked before_. He ignored that brooding thought and left the alley, also turning left to follow along to Usopp’s cafe, only to be faced with the broad back of a Sunman at the end of a crowd. Someone’s hand took him by the elbow and pulled him back before he crashed into the Sunman super with— was that a _fin_ on his back?

“You don’t want to be here,” a stranger’s voice hissed in his ear and that same hand on his elbow pulled him away. He looked down to see an older man, his face an unattractive mess of scars mostly hidden by a wide brimmed hat, who was looking at the crowd like they were all starving wolves and he a wounded lamb. There was, incongruously, a little plastic pinwheel stuck to the front of the hat.

Deciding against making a scene, Sanji let the older man drag him away.

“What’s going on?” He asked, still trying to look over his shoulder and see what it was that had gathered a crowd so quickly.

“They just arrested someone in front of Arlong’s palace,” the older guy said. It took a moment before Sanji realized that he didn’t mean an _actual_ palace, but that it was the name of the hotel-like building that Usopp had located Nami inside of. It was another second before the whole sentence made sense and he stopped moving.

“They- who?” There was no way it could be Usopp. They had been doing nothing wrong, and he’d only been distracted by his phone for five, ten minutes tops. Nevertheless, he wanted to go find that cafe as quickly as possible to reassure himself.

“Some kid with a long nose and overalls,” the older guy said, his eyes narrowing. “You know him?”

Sanji shut22 his eyes, guilt crawling across his skin like caterpillars made of ice. He shouldn’t have let that shitty kid out of his sight.

“Yeah,” he said. And now he had to figure out a way to save him that didn’t involve throwing himself suicidal into battle with a dozen Sunmen supers and a mayor with the power to call down Heroes whenever he wanted. “Yeah.”


End file.
